Tales of the Malayan Coast
from Hari Rahmadan to Hari Rahmanan to bring this four-year-old up in
the light of the Koran, but here he was striding through the jungle,
three feet and more at a step, holding to a tiger's tail!
I shouted with laughter as the truth dawned upon me. It must be
so,--Baboo was alive. His footprints were before me. He was being
dragged through the jungle by a full-grown Malayan tiger! How else
explain his impossible strides, overlapping the beast's marks!
Aboo Din turned his face toward Mecca, and his lips moved in prayer.
"May Allah be kind to this tiger!" he mumbled. "He is in the hands
of a witch. We shall find him as harmless as an old cat. Baboo will
break out his teeth with a club of billion wood and bite off his
claws with his own teeth. Allah is merciful!"
We pushed on for half an hour over a dry, foliage-cushioned strip
of ground that left no trace of the pursued. At the second wet spot
we dashed forward eagerly and scanned the trail for signs of Baboo,
but only the pads of the tiger marred the surface of the slime.
Aboo Din squatted at the root of a huge mangrove and broke forth
into loud lamentations, while the last remaining cur took advantage
of his preoccupation to sneak back on the homeward trail.
"Aboo," I commanded sarcastically, "pergie! (move on!) Baboo is a
man and a witch. He is tired of walking, and is riding on the back
of the tiger!"
Aboo gazed into my face incredulously for a moment; then, picking up
his parang and tightening his sarong, strode on ahead without a word.
At noon we came upon a sandy stretch of soil that contained
a few diseased cocoanut palms, fringed by a sluggish lagoon,
and a great banian tree whose trunk was hardly more than a mass
of interlaced roots. A troop of long-armed wah-wah monkeys were
scolding and whistling within its dense foliage with surprising
intensity. Occasionally one would drop from an outreaching limb to
one of the pendulous roots, and then, with a shrill whistle of fright,
spring back to the protection of his mates.
A Malay silenced them by throwing a half-ripe cocoanut into the
midst of the tree, and we moved on to the shade of the sturdiest
palm. There we sat down to rest and eat some biscuits softened in
the milk of a cocoanut.
"There is a boa in the roots of the banian, Aboo," I said, looking
longingly toward its deep shadow.
He nodded his head, and drew from the pouch in the knot in his sarong
a few broken fragments of areca nut. These he wrapped in a lemon leaf
well smeared with lime, and tucked the entire mass into the corner
of his mouth.
In a moment a brilliant red juice dyed his lips, and he closed his
eyes in happy contentment, oblivious, for the time, of the sand and
fallen trunks that seemed to dance in the parching rays of the sun,
oblivious, even, of the loss of his first-born.
I was revolving in my mind whether there was any use in continuing
the chase, which I would have given up long before, had I not known
that a tiger who has eaten to repletion is both timid and lazy. This
one had certainly breakfasted on a dog or on some animal before
encountering Baboo.
I had hoped that possibly the barking of the curs might have caused
him to drop the child, and make off where pursuit would be impossible;
but so far we had, after those footprints, found neither traces of
Baboo alive, nor the blood which should have been seen had the tiger
killed the child.
Suddenly a long, pear-shaped mangrove-pod struck me full in the
breast. I sprang up in surprise, for I was under a cocoanut tree,
and there was no mangrove nearer than the lagoon.
A Malay looked up sleepily, and pointed toward the wide-spreading
banian.
"Monkey, Tuan!"
My eyes followed the direction indicated, and could just distinguish a
grinning face among the interlacing roots at the base of the tree. So
I picked up the green, dartlike end of the pod, and took careful aim
at the brown face and milk-white teeth.
Then it struck me as peculiar that a monkey, after all the evidence
of fright we had so lately witnessed, should seek a hiding-place that
must be within easy reach of its greatest enemy, the boa-constrictor.
Aboo Din had aroused himself, and was looking intently in the same
direction. Before I could take a step toward the tree he had leaped
to his feet, and was bounding across the little space, shouting,
"Baboo! Baboo!"
The small brown face instantly disappeared, and we were left staring
blankly at a dark opening into the heart of the woody maze. Then we
heard the small, well-known voice of Baboo:--
"Tabek (greeting), Tuan! Greeting, Aboo Din! Tuan Consul no whip,
Baboo come out."
Aboo Din ran his long, naked arm into the opening in pursuit of his
first-born--the audacious boy who would make terms with his white
master!
"Is it not enough before Allah that this son should cause me, a Hadji,
to curse daily, but now he must bewitch tigers and dictate terms to
the Tuan and to me, his father? He shall feel the strength of my wrist;
I will--O Allah!"
Aboo snatched forth his arm with a howl of pain. One of his fingers
was bleeding profusely, and the marks of tiny teeth showed plainly
where Baboo had closed them on the offending hand.
"Biak, Baboo, mari!" (Good, come forth!) I said.
First the round, soft face of the small miscreant appeared; then
the head, and then the naked little body. Aboo Din grasped him in
his arms, regardless of his former threats, or of the blood that was
flowing from his wounds. Then, amid caresses and promises to Allah
to kill fire-fighting cocks, the father hugged and kissed Baboo until
he cried out with pain.
After each Malay had taken the little fellow in his arms, I turned
to Baboo and said, while I tried to be severe,--
"Baboo, where is tiger?"
"Sudah mati (dead), Tuan," he answered with dignity. "Tiger over there,
Tuan. Sladang kill. I hid here and wait for Aboo Din!"
He touched his forehead with the back of his brown palm. There was
nothing, either in the little fellow's bearing or words, that betrayed
fear or bravado. It was only one mishap more or less to him.
We followed Baboo's lead to the edge of the jungle, and there,
stretched out in the hot sand, lay the great, tawny beast, stamped
and pawed until he was almost unrecognizable.
All about him were the hoof-marks of the great sladang, the fiercest
and wildest animal of the peninsula--the Malayan bull that will charge
a tiger, a black lion, a boa, and even a crocodile, on sight. Hunters
will go miles to avoid one of them, and a herd of elephants will go
trumpeting away in fear at their approach.
"Kuching besar (big cat) eat Baboo's chow dog, then sleep in
lallang grass,"--this was the child's story. "Baboo find, and say,
'Bagus kuching (pretty kitty), see Baboo's doll?' Kuching no like
Baboo's doll mem consul give. Kuching run away. Baboo catch tail,
run too. Kuching go long ways. Baboo 'fraid Aboo Din whip and tell
kuching must go back. Kuching pick Baboo up in mouth when Baboo let go.
"Kuching hurt Baboo. Baboo stick fingers in kuching's eye. Kuching
no more hurt Baboo. Kuching stop under banian tree and sleep. Big
sladang come, fight kuching. Baboo sorry for good kuching. Baboo hid
from sladang,--Aboo Din no whip Baboo?"
His voice dropped to a pathetic little quaver, and he put up his
hands with an appealing gesture; but his brown legs were drawn back
ready to flee should Aboo Din make one hostile move.
"Baboo," I said, "you are a hero!"
Baboo opened his little black eyes, but did not dispute me.
"You shall go to Mecca when you grow up, and become a Hadji, and when
you come back the high kadi shall take you in the mosque and make
a kateeb of you," said I. "Now put your forehead to the ground and
thank the good Allah that the kuching had eaten dog before he got you."
Baboo did as he was told, but I think that in his heart he was more
grateful that for once he had evaded a whipping than for his remarkable
escape. A little later the punghulo came up with a half-dozen shikaris,
or hunters, and a pack of hunting dogs. The men skinned the mutilated
carcass of the only "good tiger" I met during my three years' hunting
in the jungles of this strange old peninsula.
BABOO'S PIRATES
An Adventure in the Pahang River
There was a scuffle in the outer office, and a thin, piping voice
was calling down all the curses of the Koran on the heads of my great
top-heavy Hindu guards.
"Sons of dogs," I heard in the most withering contempt, "I will see
the Tuan Consul. Know he is my father."
A tall Sikh, with his great red turban awry and his brown kaki uniform
torn and soiled, pushed through the bamboo chicks and into my presence.
He was dragging a small bit of naked humanity by the folds of its
faded cotton sarong.
The powerful soldier was hot and flushed, and a little stream of
blood trickling from his finger tips showed where they had come in
contact with his captive's teeth. It was as though an elephant had
been worried by a pariah cur.
"Your Excellency," he said, salaaming and gasping for breath.
"It is Baboo, the Harimau-Anak!"
Baboo wrenched from the guard's grasp and glided up to my desk. The
back of his open palm went to his forehead, and his big brown eyes
looked up appealingly into mine.
"What is it, Tiger-Child?" I asked, bestowing on him the title the
Malays of Kampong Glam had given him as a perpetual reminder of his
famous adventure.
Dimples came into either tear-stained cheek. He smoothed out the rents
in his small sarong, and without deigning to notice his late captor,
said in a soft sing-song voice:--
"Tuan Consul, Baboo want to go with the Heaven-Born to Pahang.
Baboo six years old,--can fight pirates like Aboo Din, the father. May
Mohammed make Tuan as odorous as musk!"
"You are a boaster before Allah, Baboo," I said, smiling.
Baboo dropped his head in perfectly simulated contrition.
"I have thought much, Tuan."
News had come to me that an American merchant ship had been wrecked
near the mouth of the Pahang River, and that the Malays, who were at
the time in revolt against the English Resident, had taken possession
of its cargo of petroleum and made prisoners of the crew.
I had asked the colonial governor for a guard of five Sikhs and a
launch, that I might steam up the coast and investigate the alleged
outrage before appealing officially to the British government.
Of course Baboo went, much to the disgust of Aboo Din, the syce.
I never was able to refuse the little fellow anything, and I knew if
I left him behind he would be revenged by running away.
I had vowed again and again that Baboo should stay lost the next
time he indulged in his periodical vanishing act, but each time when
night came and Aboo Din, the syce, and Fatima, the mother, crept
pathetically along the veranda to where I was smoking and steeling
my heart against the little rascal, I would snatch up my cork helmet
and spring into my cart, which Aboo Din had kept waiting inside the
stables for the moment when I should relent.
Since Baboo had become a hero and earned the appellation of the
Harimau-Anak, his vanity directed his footsteps toward Kampong Glam,
the Malay quarter of Singapore. Here he was generally to be found,
seated on a richly hued Indian rug, with his feet drawn up under him,
amid a circle of admiring shopkeepers, syces, kebuns, and fishermen,
narrating for the hundredth time how he had been caught at Changhi
by a tiger, carried through the jungle on its back until he came to
a great banian tree, into which he had crawled while the tiger slept,
how a sladang (wild bull) came out of the lagoon and killed the tiger,
and how Tuan Consul and Aboo Din, the father, had found him and kissed
him many times.
Often he enlarged on the well-known story and repeated long