The Further Side of Silence/The Flight of the Jungle-folk
THE FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK
KRÊTING, the old Sâkai slave-woman, first told me this story, as I sat by her side at Sayong, on the banks of the Pêrak River, watching her deft management of her long fishing-rod, and listening to her guttural grunts of satisfaction when she contrived to land anything that weighed more than a couple of ounces. The Malays called her Krêting—which means woolly-head—in derision, because her hair was not so sleek and smooth as that of their own womenfolk, and it was the only name to which she had answered for well-nigh half a century. When I knew her she was repulsively ugly, bent with years and many burdens, lean of body and limb, with a loose skin that hung in pouches of dirty wrinkles, and a shock of grizzled hair which, as the village children were wont to cry after her, resembled the nest of a squirrel. Even then, after many years of captivity, she spoke Malay with a strong Sâkai accent, splitting each word up into the individual syllables of which it was composed; and though the story of her life's tragedy moved her deeply, her telling of it was far from being fluent or eloquent. By dint of making her repeat it to me over and over again, by asking countless questions, and by fitting what she said and what she hinted on to my own knowledge of her fellow-tribesmen and their environ- ment, I contrived to piece her narrative together into something like a connected whole. For the rest, the Sâkai people of the upper Plus, into whose country duty often took me in those days, gave me their version of the facts, not once but many times, as is the manner of natives. Therefore, I think it is probable that in what follows I have not strayed far from the truth.
The Sakai camp was pitched far up among the little straying spurs of hill which wander off from the main range of the Malay Peninsula, on its western slope, and straggle out into the valleys. In front of the camp a nameless stream tumbled its hustling waters down a gorge to the plain below. Across this slender rivulet, and on every side as far as the straitened eye could carry, there rose forest, nothing but forest, crowding groups of giant trees, underwood twenty feet in height, and a tangled network of vines and creepers, the whole as impenetrable as a quickset hedge.
It had been raining heavily earlier in the day, and now that evening was closing in, each branch and leaf and twig dripped slow drops of moisture persistently with a melancholy sound as of nature furtively weeping. The fires of the camp, smouldering sul- lenly above the damp fuel, crackled and hissed their discontent, sending wreaths of thick, blue smoke curling upward into the still, moisture-laden air in such dense volumes that the flames were hardly visible even in the gloom of the gathering night. In the heavens, seen overhead through the interlacing branches, the sunlight still lingered, but the sky looked wan and woebegone.
There were a score and a half of squallid creatures occupying the little camp, men and women and children of various ages, all members of the down- trodden aboriginal tribes of the Peninsula, beings melancholy and miserable, thoroughly in keeping with the sodden, dreary gloom around them, and with their comfortless resting-place. All the chil- dren and some of the younger women were stark naked, and the other occupants of the camp wore no garment save a narrow strip of bark cloth twisted in a dirty wisp about their loins. Up here in the foothills it was intensely cold, as temperature is reckoned in the tropics, for the rain had chilled the forest land to a dank rawness. The Sâkai huts con- sisted of rude, lean-to shelters of palm leaves, sup- ported by wooden props, and under them the jungle- folk had huddled together while the pitiless sky emptied its waters upon them. No real protection from the weather had thereby been afforded to them, however, and everything in the camp was drenched and clammy.
The Sakai squatted upon their heels, pressing closely against one another, with their toes in the warm ashes, as they edged in nearer and nearer to the smoky fires. Every now and again the teeth of one or another of them would start chattering nois- ily, and several of the children whimpered and whined unceasingly. The women were silent for the most part, but the men kept up a constant flow of dis- jointed talk in queer, jerky monosyllables. Most of the Sakai were covered from head to foot with a leprous-looking skin disease, bred by damp jungles and poor diet; and since the wet had caused this to itch excruciatingly, they from time to time tore at their hides with relentless fingernails, like apes. The men smoked a green, shredded tobacco, soft and fragrant, rolled into rude cigarettes with fresh leaves for their outer casing. A few wild yams and other jungle roots were baking themselves black in the embers of the fires, and one or two fish, stuck in the cleft of a split stick, were roasting in the centre of the conds of smoke.
Of a sudden the stealthy tones of the men ceased abruptly, and the women fell a-quieting the com- plaining children with hurried maternal skill. All the folk in the camp were straining their ears to listen. Any one whose senses were less acute than those of the wild Sakai would have heard no sound of any kind save only the tinkling babble of the little stream and the miclanelioly drip of the wet branches in the forest; but after a moment's silence one of the elder men spoke.
"It is a man," he grunted, and a look of relief fitted over the sad, timorons faces of his companions.
Even the Sakai, whose place is very near the lowest rung in the scale of humanity, has his own uotious of self-esteem, and he only dignifies those of his own race by the title of "men." All other human beings are Gobs strangers.
Presently a shrill cry, half scream, half hoot, such as you might imagine to be the war-whoop of a Red Indian, sounded from the forest a quarter of a mile downstream. Even an European could have heard this, so clear and penetrating was the sound; and he would have added that it was the cry of an argus pheasant. A Malay, well though he knows his jungles, would have given to the sound a similar interpretation; but the Sâkai knew better. Their acute perceptions could detect without difficulty the indefinable difference between the real cry of the bird and this ingenious imitation, precisely similar though they would have seemed to less sharpened senses; and a moment later an argus pheasant sent back an answering challenge from the heart of the fire over which the old man who had spoken sat crouching. The whoop was immediately replied to from a hilltop a few hundred yards upstream, and the old fellow made a clicking noise in his throat, like the sound of a demoralized clockspring. It was his way of express- ing amusement, for a wild bird had answered his yell. It had failed to detect the deception which the Sâkai could recognize so easily.
In about a quarter of an hour two young Sakai, with long blowpipes over their shoulders, rattan knapsacks on their backs, and bamboo spears in their hands, passed into the camp in single file. They emerged from the forest like shadows cast upon a wall, flitting swiftly on noiseless feet, and squatted down by the central fire without a word. Each rolled a cigarette, lighted it from a flaming firebrand, and fell to smoking it in silence. At the end of a minute or so the old man who had answered their signal jerked out a question at them in the disjointed jargon of the jungle-people. The elder of the two newcomers grunted a response, with his eyes still fixed upon the sinoky fire.
"The Gobs are at Legap-three and three and three many Gobs," he said.
The Sâkai's knowledge of notation does not lend itself to arithmetical expression.
"May they be devoured by a tiger!" snarled the old man; and at the word all his kinsmen shuddered and glanced uneasily over their shoulders. He had uttered the worst curse known to the jungle-folk, who fears his housemate the tiger with all his soul, and very rarely takes his name in vain.
"They are hunting," the youngster continued; "hunting men, and To' Pangku Muda and To' Stia are with them."
He split up these Malayan titles into monosylla- bles, suiting the sounds to the disjointed articulation of his people.
The listening Sâkai grunted in chorus, in token of their dissatisfaction at the presence of these men among their enemies.
To' Pangku Muda was the Malay chief of the village of Lasak, the last of the civilized settlements on the banks of the Plus River. His title in Malay means literally "the Junior Lap," and it was con- ferred upon the headman of Lâsak because he was supposed to be in charge of the Sakai tribes, and the childlike jungle-people were euphemistically said to repose upon his knees, as an infant lies in the lap of its mother. Malays have a fondness for picturesque notions of this kind, though their attitude toward the Sâkai has never been of a kind to justify this par- ticular simile. Although To' Pangku was a Muham- madan, he had, like most of the Malays of the Plus Valley, a strong strain of Sâkai in his blood, and his inherited and acquired woodcraft rendered him formidable in the jungles when he led the annual slave-raiding party in person. Moreover, he was greatly feared by Malays and Sâkai alike for the knowledge of magic and the occult powers which were attributed to him.
To' Stia, on the other hand, was a Sâkai born and bred, but he was the headman of one of the lamer tribes who, in order to save themselves and their wonenkind and children from suffering worse things than usual, were accustomed to throw in their lot with the Malays, and to aid them in their periodical slaving expeditions. His title, given to him by the Malays, means "the Faithful Grandfather." but his fidelity was to his masters and to his own tribal interests, not to the race to which he be- longed.
The presence of these two men with the party now upon the hunting-path boded ill for the cowering creatures in the camp, for the Sâkai's only chance of escape on such occasions lay in his sensitive hearing and in his superior knowledge of forest lore. But To' Pangku Muda and To' Stia, the Sakai knew full well, could fight the jungle-people with their own weapons.
The old headman, Ka', the Fish, who had taken the lead in the conversation since the arrival of the scouts, presently spoke again, still keeping his tired old eyes fixed upon the smouldering embers.
"By what sign did you learn that To' Pangku and To' Stia were with the Gobs?" he inquired.
It was evident from his tones that he was seeking comfort for himself and his fellows in the hope that the young scouts might perhaps have been mistaken. Laish, the Ant, the youth who until now had sat by the fire in silence, answered him promptly.
"We saw the track of the foot of To' Stia on the little sandbank below Legap, and knew it by the twisted toe," he said. "Also, as we turned to leave the place, wading upstream, seeking you others, the Familiar of To' Pangku called from out the jungle Thrice. Ile was, as it might be, yonder," and he indicated the direction by pointing with his out- stretched chin, as is the manner of his people.
The poor cowering wretches around the fires shuddered in unison, like a group of treetops when a puff of wind sets the branches swaying.
"The Grandfather of many Stripes," snarled Ka' in an awed whisper under his breath.
He spoke of him with deep respect, as of a chief of high repute, for every man and woman present knew of the Familiar Spirit which in the form of a tiger followed its master, To' Pangku, whithersoever he went, and even the little children had learned to whimper miserably when their elders spoke of the Grandfather of many Stripes.
An old crone, shivering in her unlovely nakedness, beat her long, pendulous breasts with palsied hands, and whimpered plaintively, "E ke-non yeh! E kě- nou yel!" 0 my child! O my child!-which in ahnost every vernacular of the East is the woman's ery of lamentation; and a young girl who squatted near her pressed softly against her, seeking to bring her comfort. The hard tears of old age oozed with difficulty from the eyes of the hag as she rocked her body restlessly to and fro; but the girl did not weep, only her gaze sought the face of Laish, the Ant. She was a pretty girl, in spite of the dirt and squalor that disfigured her. Her figure was slim and lithe, and though her face was too thin, it had the freshness and beauty of youth, and was crowned by an abun- dance of glossy hair with a natural wave in it. Her dark eyes were lustrous and almost too large, but instead of the gayety which should have belonged to her age, they wore the hunted, harassed expression which was to be marked in all the inhabitants of this unhappy camp.
Laish seemed to swallow something hard in his throat before he turned to Ka' and said, "What shall we do, O Grandfather?"
"Wait till dawn," the old chief grunted in reply. "Then shift camp upstream, always upstream."
The Sakai pressed in more closely than ever around the fires, and the two scouts emptied the contents of their rattan knapsacks onto a couple of large banana leaves. Roots of many kinds were there, some sour jungle fruits and berries, and a miscellaneous col- lection of nastinesses, including the altogether too human corpse of a small monkey with its pink flesh showing in places bencath its wet fur. This was quickly skinned and gutted and set to roast in the cleft of a split stick, while Ka' divided the rest of the trash among those present with extreme nicely and care. Food is so important to the wild Sakai, who never within human memory have had sufficient to eat, that the right of every member of the tribe to have a proportionate share of his fellows' gleanings is recognized by all. No man dreams of devouring his own find until it has been cast into the common. stock; and in time of stress and scarcity, if a single cob of maize has to be shared by a dozen Sâkai, the starving creatures will eat the grain row by row, passing it from one to the other so that each may have his portion.
As the night wore on the Sâkai settled themselves to sleep in the warm, gray ashes of the fires, waking at intervals to tend the blaze, to talk disjointedly, and then to stretch themselves to rest once more. The younger men took it in turn to watch in the treetops on the downriver side of the camp; but no attempt to disturb them was made by the raiders, and at dawn they broke camp and resumed their weary flight.
The Malay Peninsula is one of the most lavishly watered lands in all the earth. In the interior it is not easy to go in any direction for a distance of half a mile without encountering running water, and up among the foothills of the main range, when naviga- ble rivers have been left behind, travelling through the forest resolves itself into a trudge up the valleys of successive streams, varied by occasional scrambles over ridges of hill or spurs of mountain which divide one river system from another. Often the bed of the river itself is the only available path, but as wading is a very fatiguing business, if unduly prolonged, the banks are resorted to wherever a game-track or the thinning out of the underwood renders progress along them practicable.
The Sakai fugitives, however, did not dare to sel foot upon the land when once they had quitted their camp, for their solitary chance of throwing pursuers off their track lay in leaving no trace behind them of the direction which they had followed. Accord- ingly they began by walking up the bed of the little brawling torrent, swollen and muddy from the rains of the previous afternoon, and when presently its point of junction with a tributary stream was reached, they waded up the latter because of the two it seemed to be the less likely to be selected. It was miserable work, for the water was icy cold, and the rivulet's course was strewn with ragged rocks and hampered by fallen timber; but the Sakai seened to melt through all obstructions, so swift and noiseless was their going. They crept through incredibly nar- row places; they scrambled over piles of rotten tim- her without disturbing a twig or apparently leaving a trace: and they kept strictly to the bed of the stream, scrupulously avoiding even the brushwood on the banks and the overhanging branches, lest a broken leaf should betray them to their pursuers.
The men carried their weapons and most of their few and poor possessions; and the women toiled along, their backs bowed beneath the burden of their rattan knapsacks, in which babies and carved receptacles made of lengths of bamboo jostled rude cooking-pots of the same material and scraps of evil- looking food. Children of more than two years fended for themselves, following deftly in the foot- steps of their elders, many of them even helping to carry the property of the tribe. The oldest woman in the camp, Sem-pak-the Dûri-an fruit-who, the night before had cried out in terror when To' Pangku Mûda's Familiar was mentioned by the scouts, tottered along with shaking knees and palsied limbs, her lips mumbling, her head in constant motion, her eyes restless and wild. She alone carried no burden for it was all that she could do to keep up with hei fellows unhampered by a load; but Te-C-Running Water her granddaughter, bore upon her strong young shoulders a pack heavy enough for them both, and on the march her hand was ever ready to assist the feeble steps of the older woman.
Te-U. had times been better, was to have been married to Laish, the Ant, a few days earlier; but the camp had been broken up hurriedly before the simple wedding ceremonies could be completed, for the news of the impending raid had driven all thought. of anything less urgent than the saving of life and liberty from the minds of the harassed jungle-folk. In their own primitive way these two wild creatures loved one another with something more than mere animal passion. Laish was more fearful on the girl's account than even on his own, and she looked to him for protection and felt certain that he would fight in her defence. For the moment, however, the girl's heart was really more occupied with her old grand- mother than with her lover; and it never occurred to Laish to relieve her of any part of her burden, nor did she expect such service from him.
The long procession wound its way in single file up the bed of the tributary stream until the midday sun showed clearly over their heads through the network of vegetation. The Sâkai all walked in precisely the same manner, each foot being placed exactly in front of its fellow, and cach individual treading as nearly as possible in the footsteps of the man in front of him. Experience must, in some remote and forgotten past, have taught the forest-dwellers that this is the best and quickest way of threading a path through dense jungle, and in the course of time ex- perience has become crystalized into an instinct, so that to-day, even when walking along a broad high- way, the Sâkai still adopt this peculiar gait. You may mark a similar trick of successively placing the feet one exactly in front of the other in many wild animals whose lives have been passed in heavy forest.
At last old Ka', who was leading, halted, and his followers stood still in their tracks while he grunted out his orders. A steep hill, some five hundred feet high, rose abruptly on their right. It was covered with jungle through which the eye could not pene- trate in any place for more than a few yards; but all the Sakai knew that its crest was a long spur or hogs- back, which if followed for a matter of half a mile would enable them to pass down into the valley of a stream that belonged to a wholly different river system. By making their way up its bed they in time would win to the mountains separating Perak from Pahang; and when the raiders, if they succeeded in picking up the carefully veiled trail, found that the fugitives had gone so far, it was possible that they might be discouraged from further pursuit, and might turn their attentions to some more acces- sible band of wandering Sâkai. The first thing, however, was to conceal all traces of the route which Ka's party had taken, and he therefore bade his people disperse, breaking up into little knots of two or three, so that no definite, well-defined trail might be left as a guide to the pursuers. Later the tribe would reassemble at a spot appointed by him. The Sakai were well versed in all such tricks, and very few words and no explanations were needed to convey to them an understanding of their leader's plan. In the space of a few seconds the little band of abori- gines had broken up and vanished into the forest as swiftly and as silently as a bank of mist is dispersed by a gust of morning wind.
Laish attached himself to Te-U and old Sem-pak, and the three, passing upstream, drew themselves with infinite caution on to its bank without bruising a twig, and presently began to scale the steep side of the hill. The earth was black, sodden, and slippery; the jungle was dense, and set with the cruel thorn thickets which cover the slopes of the interior; the gradient was like that of a thatched roof; and the climb made even Laish and Te-U pant with labour- ing breath, while old Sem-pak's lungs pumped pain- fully, emitting a noise like the roaring of a broken- winded horse. Up and up they scrambled, leaving hardly any trace of their ascent, and with that extraor- dinary absence of avoidable sound to which only the beasts of the forest, and their fellows, the wild Sakai, can attain. They never halted to take breath, but attacked the hill passionately, as though it were an enemy whom they were bent upon vanquishing; and at last the summit showed clearly through the tree trunks and underwood ahead of them.
Then Laish, who was leading, stopped dead in his tracks, gazing in front of him with the rigidity of a pointer at work; and the next moment, uttering an indescribable cry, half yell, half scream, he was tumbling down the slope, bearing the two women with him, rolling, falling, scrambling, heedless of the rending thorns and of the rude blows of branches, until they once more found themselves in the bed of the stream from which they had started to make the ascent. Old Sem-pak fell prone upon the ground, her chest heaving as though it imprisoned some wild thing that was seeking to effect its escape. Her eyes and those of her companions were wild with terror.
At that moment the long-drawn, moaning howl of a tiger broke the deep stillness of the forest, the sound apparently coming from some spot almost vertically above their heads; and the three Sakai listened, shuddering, while their teeth chattered. Laish had caught a glimpse of the great striped body gliding with stealthy speed through the sparse jungle near the summit of the hill, and this had sufficed to send him floundering down the slope in precipitate flight.
The three Sakai were silent, straining their ears to listen above the noise of Semi-pak's agonized sobs for breath. A moment later the howl broke out once more, a little farther to the left this time, and it was quickly followed by a scream such as only a human being could utter. Then again there was silence— silence desolate and miserable during which the tapping of a woodpecker could be distinctly heard. Then in an instant the whole jungle seemed to have been invaded by all the devils in hell. Every mem- ber of the little band of fugitives was sounding the danger yell a shrill, far-carrying cry in which the despair of the miserable jungle-folk becomes vocal, calling to the unresponsive heavens and to unpity- ing man and beast the tale of their helplessness and of their wrongs. Te-I and Laish joined in the cry, but above the Lumult could be heard the bestial growlings of the unseen tiger worrying its prey.
Presently the Sakai, still screaming as though in noise they sought comfort and protection from the dangers besetting them, forced their way, singly or in groups, out of the underwood, and gathered in a sluddering group in the bed of the stream. One of their number-Ple, the Fruit and the two small children whom she had been carrying in the knapsack slung upon her back, were missing, and the man who had been her husband, staring at nothing with eyes that protruded horribly, was making strange clicking noises in his throat, which is the way in which the male Sâkai gives expression to deep emotion. Grad- ually, however, the band was stilled into silence, and huddled together listening as though spellbound to the growlings of the tiger. Then Ka' spoke.
"It is the accursed one," he said. "It is he that followeth ever at the heels of To' Pangku. I beheld his navel, yellow and round and swollen. It is situated at the back of his neck. Because I saw it, he dared not touch me, and passing by me, took Ple and the little ones, her children. Come, my brothers, let us cry aloud informing him that we have seen his navel, and he, being overcome with shame, will seek speedily to hide himself."
Taking their time from Ka', all the men raised a shout in chorus, imparting the strange, anatomical information in question to the growling monster on the ridge. They made so goodly a noise that for a moment the snarling of the beast was drowned by it; but when they paused to listen, it was heard as dis- tinetly as before.
"It is the accursed beast of magic, without doubt," said Ka' despondently. "Otherwise, a great shame would have overcome him, and he would surely have fled."
The unabashed tiger continued to snarl and growl over its vietims, high above the Sâkai's heads on the brow of the hogsback.
"Come, let us ery to him once more," said Ka' to his fellows; and again they raised a shrill shout that carried far and wide through the forest, repeat- ing that they had beheld the beast's navel, and that they knew it to be situated at the back of its neek. Malays and Sâkai alike believe the tiger to be very sensitive upon this subject, and that he will fly before the face of any man who possesses the necessary knowledge of his anatomy. The native theory in- clines to the opinion that the tiger's navel is loeated in his neck, and you may examine the dead body of one of these animals minutely without finding any- thing to disprove, or indeed to prove, this notion.
A third time the Sâkai raised their shout, and when they relapsed into silence the tiger had ceased his growlings; but another sound, faint and far, came from the direction of the lower reaches of the stream up which the tribe had been toiling all the morning. It was like the roar of a rapid, but was broader, coarser, gruffer, and when they heard it the Sâkai were conscious of a painful tightening of their heart- strings, for it recalled them suddenly to recollection of the danger from human pursuers which for the moment had well-nigh passed out of their eonscious- ness. It was the sorák-the war-cry of the Malays. The raiders were hot upon their trail, and were pressing up the banks of the little stream in pursuit. The yells which the fugitives had been uttering would serve to guide them, and they would thus be saved the slow tracking and uncertainty which de- lays the hunter and gives the quarry his best chance of escape. In their flight from the Familiar of To' Pangku for such they firmly believed the tiger to be -the Sâkai had trampled the thorn-thickets and the underwood recklessly, and even an European would have found little difficulty in reading the tale which their hasty footmarks told so plainly.
Ka', bidding his people follow him, turned his back upon the ascent for none dared again face the fury of the Familiar-and plunged into the jungle, worm- ing a way through the packed tree trunks and the dense scrub with wonderful deftness and speed. Ka', bent almost double, went al a kind of jog-trot. steady, swift, but careful and unhurried; and his people, young and old, streamed along at his heels adopting the sanie nimble gait. They were covering the ground now at a far faster rate than any Malay could hope to maintain through virgin forest; but they were leaving behind them a trail that a chi! 1 could follow without difficulty, and in their passag they were partially clearing a path for the use of their enemies.
All day they kept on steadily, only halting now and again for a brief breathing space when old Sem-pak, overweighted by her load of seventy years, could no longer keep up with her fellows. The adults were from time to time carrying some of the smaller children who had begun the day on foot. At first the sound of the sorak had been heard once or twice, still indistinct and very distant, but after the first half hour it had ceased to be audible, and nothing was to be heard save the tinkle of running water, the occasional note of a bird, or the faint stir of animal life in the forest around. The fugitives had thrown away most of their loads when the tiger stampeded them, and they now were travelling burdened by little. save their babies and their weapons. When life itself is in jeopardy, property ceases to possess a value. For the time being it ceases to exist.
The same expression-tense, fearful, strained- was to be marked on the faces of all the Sakai, and their eyes were wild, savage, hunted, and filled to the brim with a great fear. Even their movements were eloquent of apprehension, and the light touch of their feet upon the ground betokened that their muscles were braced for instant flight at the first sign of danger.
At about three o'clock in the afternoon the heavens opened and emptied themselves on to the forest in sheets of tropical rain. At the end of a few minutes every branch and leaf overhead had become a separate conduit and was spouting water like a gargoyle; but still the Sâkai continued their march, pressing for- ward with the energy bred of despair into jungle- depths which even to them were untrodden lands. They had no objective in sight now; their one idea was to get away it mattered not whither-away from the Malays, from captivity and death.
As the dusk began to gather the rain ceased, and Ka' cried to his fellows that they must halt for the night. The moon was well past the full, and the darkness in the forest would be too absolute for even the Sakai to force a way through the thickets during the earlier hours of the night. Also the fugitives were almost worn out by their prolonged exertions. Not daring to kindle a fire, lest its light should serve as a guide to their pursuers, they squatted in a drag- gled woebegone group, seeking warmth and comfort by close physical contact with one another. They were chilled by the rain and miserably cold; they had eaten nothing since the dawn, and they had but a few blackened yams and roots between them with which to assuage their hunger; their straggly mops of hair were drenched, and the skin diseases with which they were covered caused their bodies to itch distractingly. Bu all material discomforts were forgotten in the agony of terror which wrung their hearts.
Shortly after midnight they all awoke, suddenly and simultaneously. They had been sleeping in sitting attitudes, with their knees drawn up to their chins, and their heads nodding above them. They spoke no word, but they listened breathlessly. The yowling moan of a tiger was sounding about half a mile away to the south. The brute drew nearer and nearer, moaning and howling from time to time, and prolonging each complaining note with a wanton delight in its own unmusical song. It was the call of a full-fed tiger which cared not how rudely he dis- turbed the forest silence and warned the jungle of his presence. The Sakai, besel at once by material and superstitious fears, cowered miserably and drew nearer still to one another. Thus for more than half an hour they sat in utter silence, quaking, while the tiger approached slowly and deliberately, till pres- ently it seemed to be calling from the jungle within a few yards of the shivering wretches. Now it ap- peared to make a complete circle of the camp, yowl- ing savagely, and then fell to prowling about and about the little group of terror-stricken creatures, as Lhough it were herding them. And all the time they could see nothing through the intense darkness, and the complete loss of the sense of sight served to quicken and torture even their rudimentary imagina- tions. For an hour this lasted, and then the tiger seemed to draw off, whereupon the jungle-folk, who had been too occupied by their terror of the beast to spare a thought to any other danger, became aware that human beings were in their vicinity. How they knew this it would be impossible to explain: the instinct of the wild tribes is as unerring as that of miany animals, and they felt, rather than heard or perceived through any of their ordinary senses, the proximity of their pursuers.
Noiselessly then the Sâkai, men and women alike, fell to drawing clear of the underwood the long lines of green rattan which grow in such profusion in all the jungles of the interior of the Peninsula. These they twisted into great coils the size of large cart- wheels, and the young men of the tribe, some seven or eight in number, with Laish among them, began swarming into the nearest trees. They had gathered and prepared the rattan in darkness almost absolute, guided only by their sense of touch, and the men now climbed unseeing into the impenetrable blackness of the night. Their instinct had told the forest people not only that their enemies were at hand, but also that the camp had been surrounded by them. They felt pretty certain that the Malays and the tamer Sakai who were with them would not attack until just before the dawn; therefore it was their object to effect their escape, if they could do so, before day- light returned to the earth.
The wild Sakai, who have never lost the arboureal habits of primitive man, can walk up the bare trunk of a trec with as much case as you ascend the door- steps of your house, and when once fairly among the branches they are thoroughly at home. The young men, accordingly, had no difficulty in climbing into the treetops, whence, swinging themselves lightly from bough to bough, they began to bridge the mor difficult places with lines of rattan, making them fast at each end. In this manner before three-quarters of an hour had elapsed they had constructed a patlı of slack-ropes some eighty yards in length, and had passed over the heads of the Malays who lay en- camped all around. They then made their way back to their fellows and gave the word for the start.
Old Ka leading, the long string of jungle-folk climbed slowly into the treetops, all treading lightly without making a sound, the anxious mothers striving to still the babies which they bore strung about their necks. Deftly they picked their way through the pitchy darkness, feeling for their foothold upon bending bough and branch, and treading with ex traordinary precision upon the slender lines of rattan. and for some thirty or forty yards all went well with them. Then one of the babies whimpered, and at the sound the jungle in front and below them broke into a tumult of familiar yells, which told them that those of the slave-raiders who belonged to their own race had discovered their attempt to escape, and were doing their best to head the fugitives off and to warn the sleepy Malays.
Presently old Ka' saw the mop heads of half a dozen tame Sâkai spring into prominence against the dim sky. His enemies had swarmed up into a treetop not twenty feet away from him, and were in possession of the other end of the rattan line along which he was tightroping. A voice, which he recog- nized as that of To' Stia of the twisted toe, cried hurriedly in the Sakai dialect "Ok i-oda"-give me a knife and some one unseen in the darkness, grunted "Kod"-Take it.
At this Ka', screaming a warning to his fellows, turned sharply about in midair, and headed back for the tree from which he had set out. Involuntarily he looked down into the abyss of impenetrable dark- ness beneath his feet, into the falliomless obscurity on either hand, but even his eyes, gifted with the marvellous sight of the jungle-folk, could see nothing. A man and two women, the latter bearing little children against their bosoms, had turned to fly when Ka' uttered his warning ery; but they were feeling their way along the rattan line unaided by any seuse save that of touch. and even in their pauie their movements were slow and cautious. All this hap- pened in the space of a few seconds, and then the rattan jerked sickeningly under the blow of a heavy woodknife. Another blow, and the brawny creeper groaned like a sentient thing in pain; a third, and it parted with an awful suddenness, and Ka' and the two women were precipitated from a height of nearly eighty feet into the invisible forest below. The man immediately in front of them had just sufficient time to save himself by clutching the branches of the tree to which the near end of the rattan was made fast.
Old Ka' gave vent to an appalling yell, into which was compressed all the passionate despair of his long lifetime and of his downtrodden and unhappy race. Each of the women, as she felt her foothold give way beneath her, screamed shrilly-sudden, abrupt cries which ceased with a jerk, as of the breath caught. sharply. For the space of a second there was silence, and then the crashing sound of heavy bodies falling headlong through leaves and branches, and three thudding concussions -distinct, but almost simul- taneous were succeeded by a few low groans far below in the darkness. The tame Sakai yelled their triumph, passing the news of their success on to the Malays, who answered with the sorak, and thereafter There was much laughter. Ka's people, sick with the horror of what they had heard and trembling with fear, made their way back to the spot where they had sat encamped all night, and luddling up against one another in quaking misery, waited in dumb despair for the dawn and for death.
As soon as the slow daylight began to make itself felt in the obscurity of the forest, investing the watchers, as it seemed, with a new and wonderful gift of sight, the raiders began to close in around their quarry. One or two of the younger Malays, who carried muskets, fired a few shots into the thick of their victims, with the object of frightening the last atom of fight out of them, and old Sem-pak rolled over on her back, with her knees drawn up against her breast, jerking spasmodically. With a cry of pain and despair, Te-U threw herself prone across the old woman's body, calling to her frantically by name, and vainly secking to pet and coax her back into life by tender words and caresses. Then the raiders rushed the camp, and for a moment or two all was noise and confusion. The Sakai broke like a herd of stampeded deer, leaving several of their number dead or wounded on the ground. A good many of the more active males made good their escape, but Laish was killed with his spear in his hand as he fought to defend Te-U, who saw him fling away his life in a vain effort to rescue her, and felt the cup of her misery to be filled to overflowing.
In all, the raiders captured Te-I and four other young women, half a dozen children, and two young men. There were also several older women who were not regarded as worth taking. It was, as sueli Things were reckoned, a highly successful expedition, and the hunting-party returned to Lâsak in grea! spirits, for the labour and risks of slave chasing was not much to their taste, and with so goodly a crowd of captives in hand they would not find it necessary to undertake another raid for a couple of years or so.
To' Pangku Muda's oath of fealty to the Sultan of Pêrak bound him in those days-and indeed until the British Governinent took in hand the administra- tion of the country in the middle seventies of the nineteenth century-to bring a large raft downriver once a year, loaded with jungle produce. One of the items composing this annual tribute was a Sâkai man and woman, or failing them, two clephant tusks of approved weight. The latter were not always easy to procure, so it was usually found more convenient to sacrifice instead the lifelong happiness of a couple of human beings.
Te-U and a youth named Gaur, the Pig, were selected for the first year's offering, and accordingly they presently found themselves lying on the great raft, bound hand and foot, floating slowly into a land of the existence of which they had not dreamed, in company with stores of gutta, rattan, and other jungle produce, and the supplies of rice and other foodstuffs which had won for the Plus Valley the Title of "the Rice-pot of the King."
The remainder of their days were passed in cap- tivity among the people of an alien race, who despised them heartily and held them as little better than the beasts of the field; but perhaps the fullest measure of their sufferings was their inability to satisfy the longing for the jungle and for the free life of the forest which is like a ceaseless ache in the heart of the jungle-folk.
Such was the story that Krêting, the old Sakai slave woman, told me that afternoon long ago, as she sat angling for little fish on the banks of the Pêrak River. Her kinsfolk of the Sâkai country were still able, in some instances, to recall the incidents con- nected with her capture, and they spoke to me of her as Te-I-Running Water-a name which set the sad-faced old hag weeping very pitifully when, after the lapse of so many years, she heard it spoken by my lips together with some broken fragments of he mother-tongue.