Tales of the Malayan Coast

Part 1

Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.)

Tales of the Malayan Coast

From Penang to the Philippines

Rounsevelle Wildman

Consul General of the United States at Hong Kong

Illustrated by Henry Sandham

Boston

Lothrop Publishing Company

Copyright, 1899, By

Lothrop Publishing Company.

Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

To Our Hero And my friend Admiral George Dewey, U.S.N. I Dedicate this Book

Flagship Olympia, Manila, 21 Sept., 1898.

My Dear Wildman:--

Yours of 12th instant is at hand. I am much flattered by your request to dedicate your book to me, and would be pleased to have you do so.

With kindest regards, I am, Very truly yours,

George Dewey.

PREFACE

These stories are the result of nine years' residence and experience on the Malayan coast--that land of romance and adventure which the ancients knew as the Golden Chersonesus, and which, in modern times, has been brought again into the atmosphere of valor and performance by Rajah Brooke of Sarawak, the hero of English expansion, and Admiral George Dewey of the Asiatic squadron, the hero of American achievement. The author, in his official duties as Special Commissioner of the United States for the Straits Settlement and Siam, and, later, as Consul General of the United States at Hong Kong, has mingled with and studied the diverse people of the Malayan coast, from the Sultan of Johore and Aguinaldo the Filipino to the lowest Eurasian and "China boy" of that wonderful Oriental land. These stories are based on his experiences afloat and ashore, and are offered to the American public at this time when all glimpses of the land that Columbus sailed to find are of especial interest to the modern possessors of the land he really did discover.

CONTENTS

Page Baboo's Good Tiger 9 Baboo's Pirates 28 How we Played Robinson Crusoe 47 The Sarong 66 The Kris 74 The White Rajah of Borneo 81 Amok! 101 Lepas's Revenge 130 King Solomon's Mines 147 Busuk 181 A Crocodile Hunt 200 A New Year's Day in Malaya 219 In the Burst of the Southwest Monsoon 230 A Pig Hunt on Mount Ophir 254 In the Court of Johore 270 In the Golden Chersonese 293 A Fight with Illanum Pirates 321

TALES OF THE MALAYAN COAST FROM PENANG TO THE PHILIPPINES

BABOO'S GOOD TIGER

A Tale of the Malacca Jungle

Aboo Din's first-born, Baboo, was only four years old when he had his famous adventure with the tiger he had found sleeping in the hot lallang grass within the distance of a child's voice from Aboo Din's bungalow.

For a long time before that hardly a day had passed but Aboo-Din, who was our syce, or groom, and wore the American colors proudly on his right arm, came in from the servants' quarters with an anxious look on his kindly brown face and asked respectfully for the tuan (lord) or mem (lady).

"What is it, Aboo Din?" the mistress would inquire, as visions of Baboo drowned in the great Shanghai jar, or of Baboo lying crushed by a boa among the yellow bamboos beyond the hedge, passed swiftly through her mind.

"Mem see Baboo?" came the inevitable question.

Part 2

It was unnecessary to say more. At once Ah Minga, the "boy"; Zim, the cook; the kebuns (gardeners); the tukanayer (water-boy), and even the sleek Hindu dirzee, who sat sewing, dozing, and chewing betel-nut, on the shady side of the veranda, turned out with one accord and commenced a systematic search for the missing Baboo.

Sometimes he was no farther off than the protecting screen of the "compound" hedge, or the cool, green shadows beneath the bungalow. But oftener the government Sikhs had to be appealed to, and Kampong Glam in Singapore searched from the great market to the courtyards of Sultan Ali. It was useless to whip him, for whippings seemed only to make Baboo grow. He would lisp serenely as Aboo Din took down the rattan withe from above the door, "Baboo baniak jahat!" (Baboo very bad!) and there was something so charmingly impersonal in all his mischief, that we came between his own brown body and the rod, time and again. There was nothing distinctive in Baboo's features or form. To the casual observer he might have been any one of a half-dozen of his playmates. Like them, he went about perfectly naked, his soft, brown skin shining like polished rosewood in the fierce Malayan sun.

His hair was black, straight, and short, and his eyes as black as coals. Like his companions, he stood as straight as an arrow, and could carry a pail of water on his head without spilling a drop.

He, too, ate rice three times a day. It puffed him up like a little old man, which added to his grotesqueness and gave him a certain air of dignity that went well with his features when they were in repose. Around his waist he wore a silver chain with a silver heart suspended from it. Its purpose was to keep off the evil spirits.

There was always an atmosphere of sandalwood and Arab essence about Baboo that reminded me of the holds of the old sailing-ships that used to come into Boston harbor from the Indies. I think his mother must have rubbed the perfumes into his hair as the one way of declaring to the world her affection for him. She could not give him clothes, or ornaments, or toys: such was not the fashion of Baboo's race. Neither was he old enough to wear the silk sarong that his Aunt Fatima had woven for him on her loom.

Baboo had been well trained, and however lordly he might be in the quarters, he was marked in his respect to the mistress. He would touch his forehead to the red earth when I drove away of a morning to the office; though the next moment I might catch him blowing a tiny ball of clay from his sumpitan into the ear of his father, the syce, as he stood majestically on the step behind me.

Baboo went to school for two hours every day to a fat old Arab penager, or teacher, whose schoolroom was an open stall, and whose only furniture a bench, on which he sat cross-legged, and flourished a whip in one hand and a chapter of the Koran in the other.

There were a dozen little fellows in the school; all naked. They stood up in line, and in a soft musical treble chanted in chorus the glorious promises of the Koran, even while their eyes wandered from the dusky corner where a cheko lizard was struggling with an atlas moth, to the frantic gesticulations of a naked Hindu who was calling his meek-eyed bullocks hard names because they insisted on lying down in the middle of the road for their noonday siesta.

Baboo's father, Aboo Din, was a Hadji, for he had been to Mecca. When nothing else could make Baboo forget the effects of the green durian he had eaten, Aboo Din would take the child on his knees and sing to him of his trip to Mecca, in a quaint, monotonous voice, full of sorrowful quavers. Baboo believed he himself could have left Singapore any day and found Mecca in the dark.

We had been living some weeks in a government bungalow, fourteen miles from Singapore, across the island that looks out on the Straits of Malacca. The fishing and hunting were excellent. I had shot wild pig, deer, tapirs, and for some days had been getting ready to track down a tiger that had been prowling in the jungle about the bungalow.

But of a morning, as we lay lazily chatting in our long chairs behind the bamboo chicks, the cries of "Harimau! Harimau!" and "Baboo" came up to us from the servants' quarters.

Aboo Din sprang over the railing of the veranda, and without stopping even to touch the back of his hand to his forehead, cried,--

"Tuan Consul, tiger have eat chow dog and got Baboo!"

Then he rushed into the dining room, snatched up my Winchester and cartridge-belt, and handed them to me with a "Lekas (quick)! Come!"

He sprang back off the veranda and ran to his quarters where the men were arming themselves with ugly krises and heavy parangs.

I had not much hope of finding the tiger, much less of rescuing Baboo, dead or alive. The jungle loomed up like an impassable wall on all three sides of the compound, so dense, compact, and interwoven, that a bird could not fly through it. Still I knew that my men, if they had the courage, could follow where the tiger led, and could cut a path for me.

Aboo Din unloosed a half-dozen pariah dogs that we kept for wild pig, and led them to the spot where the tiger had last lain. In an instant the entire pack sent up a doleful howl and slunk back to their kennels.

Continue reading Tales of the Malayan Coast free in the Wunder reader →