Part 21

"Not one moved, and all was still. Suddenly the Admiral raised his head, and gazed out and down at his followers. Then he spoke, and the sound of his voice reached far out to the most distant prau that lay becalmed within the shadow of casuarina-shaded Puli.

"'Allah il Allah, I have sinned, and I must die. No more shall my name be known in the land. I am no longer laksamana; neither am I a dato. Allah is just. Tuan Allah Suka!'

"A foreigner smote him in the mouth, and a great cry arose from without the walls.

"The war went on; but day after day did the Governor send a message to the Laksamana in the dungeon. 'Reveal the spot where thy gold is hidden, and thy life and liberty are granted.'

"Day by day the Dato replied, 'My life is a pollution in the nostrils of Allah. Take it.'

"So they laid the great chief on the stones of his cell, bound hand and foot, and one by one did they break the joints of his toes, his fingers, and then the joints of his legs and arms. When they had finished, and he still lived, the woman came to him and mocked him, but the Admiral closed his eyes and prayed. 'O Allah, the all-merciful and the loving kind, forgive me for my erring heart. Thou knowest that it goes out to this woman still. Let not my country suffer for my deeds. I gave unto thy servant Solomon of the gold that has made us great. If thou canst, thou wilt whisper the secret of our nation to one of thy chosen people, that they may have means whereby to fight thy battles.'

"And then the woman raised her hand, and with one stroke of the axe an attendant severed from his body the head of the once mighty Laksamana of the fleets of Johore, Acheen and Maur.

"So died the secret of Ophir. So fell Malacca forever into the hands of the foreigner."

The Tuan Hakim's voice trembled as he closed. During the tragic recital he had dropped into the soft, melodious chant of his nation. At times he would lapse into Malay, and the boatmen would push forward and listen with unconcealed excitement. Then, as he returned to English, they would drop back into their places, but never take their eyes off the face of the speaker. Only our China "boys" took no interest in the past of Maur. It was tiffin time, and they were anxious to set before us our lunch of rice curry, gula Malacca, whiskey and soda.

The sun was directly above us, and the fierce, steely glare of the Malayan sky and water dazzled our eyes. Mount Ophir looked as far ahead as ever. The winding course of the river seemed at times to take us directly away from it.

Just as we had finished our meal, and had lighted our manilas, the steersman turned the little launch sharply about, and headed directly for the shore. In a moment we had shot under and through the deep fringe of mangrove trees, and had emerged into the jungle. On all sides the trees rose, columnar and straight, and the ground was firm, although densely covered with ferns and vines.

The launch stopped, and the chief turned to me. "Now for the climb. We have thirty miles to the base of the mountain. We will push on ten miles, and spend the night at a Malay village. The next day we will try and reach the base of the mountain."

I looked about me. We might have been surrounded by prison walls, for all hope there seemed to be of our getting an inch into the jungle.

Our servants gathered up our rather extensive impedimenta, and sprang into the water. We were forced to follow suit, and begin our day's march with wet feet. A few steps up the stream we came upon an old elephant track and plunged boldly in,--and it was in! For three miles we labored through a series of the most elaborate mud-holes that I have ever seen. The elephants in breaking a path through the jungle are extremely timid in their boldness. The second one always steps in the footprints of the first. Year after year it is the same, until in course of time the path is marked by a series of pitfalls, often two feet in depth; and as it rains nearly every day they become a seething, slimy paste of mud.

Our heavy cloth shoes and stockings did not protect us from the attacks of innumerable leeches; for when we at last reached an open bit of forest and sat down to rest, we found dozens of them attached to our legs and even on our bodies. They were small, and beautifully marked with stripes of bright yellow.

It was twilight when we neared the welcome kampong. We had sent a runner ahead to notify the punghulo of our arrival, and as we finished our struggle with the last thorny rattan, and tripped over the last rubber-vine, we could hear the shouting of men and the barking of dogs. Evidently we were expected.

The kampong might have been any other in the kingdom, and the little old weazened punghulo, who came bowing and smiling forward, might have been at the head of any one of a hundred other kampongs,--they were all so much alike. A half-dozen attap bungalows, built under a cocoanut grove, all facing toward a central plaza; a score of dogs for each bungalow; a flock of featherless fowls scratching and wallowing beneath them, and a bevy of half-naked children playing with a rattan ball within the light of a central fire,--made up the details of a little picture of Malayan home life that had become very familiar to me within the last three years.

Our servants at once set about preparing supper before the fire, while we for politeness' sake compounded a mouthful of betel-nut and syrah leaf from the punghulo's state box.

The next morning we set out for our twenty miles' tramp, along a narrow jungle path, accompanied by some ten natives of the village whom my companion had retained to cut a path for us up the mountain. It was a long, tiresome journey, and we were heartily glad when it was ended, and we were encamped on the rocky banks of a fern-hid stream.

Twice during our day's march had we crossed deep, ragged depressions in the earth, which were overgrown with a jungle that seemed to be coequal in age with the surrounding trees. We did not pause to examine them, although our natives pointed them out with the expressive word mas (gold). We promised to do that at a later date. On the border of the creek I found some gold-bearing rock, and while the Tuan Hakim was engaged in securing some superb specimens of the great atlas moth, I sat down and crushed some fragments of it, and obtained enough gold to satisfy me that the rock would run four ounces to the ton.

It was a beautiful night. We lay under our mosquito netting, and gazed up through the interlacing branches of the trees at the star-strewn sky, and smoked our manilas in weary content. The long, full "coo-ee" of the stealthy argus pheasant sounded at intervals in distant parts of the forest. It might have been the call of the orang-utan, or the wild hillmen of the country, for they have imitated the call of this most glorious of birds.

The shrill, never ceasing whir of the cicada hardly attracted our attention; while the whistle and crash of a monkey that was inspecting us from his perch among the trees above caused me to peer upward, in hopes of catching a glimpse of his grayish outlines.

I had not had an opportunity of asking my companion for the details of his tragic story. I turned to him, and found him watching me attentively. "Were you listening to the call of the coo-ee?" he asked.

"Yes," I answered.

"It is the queen of birds. I will get you one. I have never shot one. They only come out at night, and then only to disappear, but we can trap them. It will die in captivity. That is why Solomon could not keep them, and sent for new ones every three years."

"What became of the woman?" I asked.

"The body of the Laksamana was thrown over the walls by the Portuguese," he said moodily. "It was embalmed and laid away. Two months from that day the woman was walking outside the walls. The war was over. There was no more gold. Three of my people sprang upon her and the Portuguese she was to marry." He paused for a moment and looked up at the stars, then went on in a cold, matter-of-fact tone. "They were lashed to the headless body of the man they had murdered, and thrown into the royal tiger-cage, by order of his Highness, Ali, Sultan of Maur."

I raised my curtain and threw the stub of my cigar out into the darkness, a smothered exclamation of horror escaping my lips.