Part 24

Busuk's long black hair had to be done up in a marvellous chignon on the top of her head. First, her maids washed it beautifully clean with the juice of the lime and the lather of the soap-nut; then it was combed and brushed until every hair glistened like ebony; next it was twisted up and stuck full of the quaint golden and tortoise-shell bodkins, with here and there a spray of jasmine and chumpaka.

Busuk's milky-white teeth had to be filed off more than a fourth. She put her head down on the lap of the woman and closed her eyes tight to keep back the hot tears that would fall, but after the pain was over and her teeth were blackened, she looked in the mirror at her swollen gums and thought that she was very beautiful. Now she could chew the betel-nut from the box her mother had given her!

The palms of her hands and the nails of her fingers and toes were painted red with henna, and the lids of her eyes touched up with antimony. When all was finished, they led her out into the great room, which was decorated with mats of colored palm, masses of sweet-smelling flowers and maidenhair fern. There they placed her in the chair of state to receive her relatives and friends.

She trembled a little for fear Mamat would not think her beautiful, but when, last of all, he came up and smiled and claimed the bit of betel-nut that she was chewing for the first time, and placed it in his mouth, she smiled back and was very happy.

Then the kadi pronounced them man and wife in the presence of all, for is it not written, "Written deeds may be forged, destroyed, or altered; but the memory of what is transacted in the presence of a thousand witnesses must remain sacred? Allah il Allah!" And all the people answered, "Suka! Suka!" (We wish it! We wish it!)

Then Mamat took his seat on the dais beside the bride, and the punghulo passed about the betel-box. First, Busuk took out a syrah leaf smeared with lime and placed in it some broken fragments of the betel-nut, and chewed it until a bright red liquid oozed from the corners of her mouth. The others did the same.

Then the women brought garlands of flowers--red allamandas, yellow convolvulus, and pink hibiscus--and hung them about Busuk and Mamat, while the musicians outside beat their crocodile-hide drums in frantic haste.

The great feast began out in the sandy plaza before the houses. There was cock-fighting and kicking the ragga ball, wrestling and boxing, and some gambling among the elders.

Toward night Busuk was put in a rattan chair and carried by the young men, while Mamat and the girls walked by her side, a mile away, where her husband's big cadjang-covered prau lay moored. It was to take them to his bungalow at Bander Bahru. The band went, too, and the boys shot off guns and fire-crackers all the way, until Busuk's head swam, and she was so happy that the tears came into her eyes and trickled down through the rouge on her cheeks.

So ended Busuk's childhood. She was not quite fifteen when she became mistress of her own little palm-thatched home. But it was not play housekeeping with her; for she must weave the sarongs for Mamat and herself for clothes and for spreads at night, and the weaving of each cost her twenty days' hard labor. If she could weave an extra one from time to time, Mamat would take it up to Singapore and trade it at the bazaar for a pin for the hair or a sunshade with a white fringe about it.

Then there were the shell-fish and prawns on the sea-shore to be found, greens to be sought out in the jungle, and the padi, or rice, to be weeded. She must keep a plentiful supply of betel-nut and lemon leaves for Mamat and herself, and one day there was a little boy to look after and make tiny sarongs for.

So, long before the time that our American girls are out of school, and about the time they are putting on long dresses, Busuk was a woman. Her shoulders were bent, her face wrinkled, her teeth decayed and falling out from the use of the syrah leaf. She had settled the engagement of her oldest boy to a little girl of two years in a neighboring kampong, and was dusting out the things in the camphor-wood chest, preparatory to the great occasion.

I used to wonder, as I wandered through one of these secluded little Malay villages that line the shores of the peninsula and are scattered over its interior, if the little girl mothers who were carrying water and weaving mats did not sometimes long to get down on the warm, white sands and have a regular romp among themselves,--playing "Cat-a-corner" or "I spy"; for none of them were over seventeen or eighteen!

Still their lives are not unhappy. Their husbands are kind and sober, and they are never destitute. They have their families about them, and hear laughter and merriment from one sunny year to another.

Busuk's father-in-law is dead now, and the last time I visited Bander Bahru to shoot wild pig, Mamat was punghulo, collecting the taxes and administering the laws.

He raised the back of his open palm to his forehead with a quiet dignity when I left, after the day's sport, and said, "Tabek! Tuan Consul. Do not forget Mamat's humble bungalow." And Busuk came down the ladder with little Mamat astride her bare shoulders, with a pleasant "Tabek! Tuan! (Good-by, my lord.) May Allah's smile be ever with you."

A CROCODILE HUNT

At the foot of Mount Ophir

The little pleasant-faced Malay captain of his Highness's three-hundred ton yacht Pante called softly, close to my ear, "Tuan--Tuan Consul, Gunong Ladang!" I sprang to my feet, rubbed my eyes, and gazed in the direction indicated by the brown hand.

I saw not five miles off the low jungle-bound coast of the peninsula, and above it a great bank of vaporous clouds, pierced by the molten rays of the early morning sun. As I looked around inquiringly, the captain, bowing, said: "Tuan," and I raised my eyes. Again I saw the lofty mountain peak surmounting the cushion of clouds, standing out bold and clear against the almost fierce azure of the Malayan sky.

"Mount Ophir!" burst from my lips. The captain smiled and went forward to listen to the linesman's "two fathoms, sir, two and one half fathoms, sir, two fathoms, sir"; for we were crossing the shallow bar that protects the mouth of the great river Maur from the ocean.

The tide was running out like a mill-race. The Pante was backing from side to side, and then pushing carefully ahead, trying to get into the deep water beyond, before low tide.

Suddenly there was a soft, grating sound and the captain came to me and touched his hat.

"We are on the bar, sir. Will you send a despatch by the steam-cutter to Prince Suliman, asking for the launch? We cannot get off until the night tide."

The Pante had so swung around that we could plainly see the big red istana, or palace, of Prince Suliman close to the sandy shore, surrounded by a grove of graceful palms. With the aid of our glasses the white and red blur farther up the river resolved itself into the streets and quays of the little city of Bander Maharani, the capital of the province of Maur in dominions of his Highness Abubaker, Sultan of Johore. Above and overshadowing all both in beauty and historical interest was the famous old mountain where King Solomon sent his diminutive ships for "gold, silver, peacocks, and apes."

By the time the ladies were astir, the mists had vanished and Gunong Ladang, or as it is styled in Holy Writ Mount Ophir, presented to our admiring gaze its massive outlines, set in a frame of green and blue. The dense jungle crept halfway up its sides and at the point where the cloud stratum had rested but an hour before, it merged into a tangled network of vines and shrubs which in their turn gave place to the black, red rock that shone like burnished brass.

If our minds wandered away from visions of future crocodile-shooting to dreams of the past wealth that had been taken from the ancient mines that honeycombed the base of the mountain, it is hardly to be wondered at. If Dato or "Lord" Garlands told us queer stories of woods and masonry that antedated the written history of the country, stories of mines and workings that were overgrown with a jungle that looked as primeval as the mountain itself, he was to be excused on the plea that we, waiting on a sandy bar with the metallic glare of the sea in our eyes, were glad of any subject to distract our thoughts.

The Resident's launch brought out Prince Mat and the Chief Justice, both of whom spoke English with an easy familiarity. Both had been in Europe and Prince Mat had dined with Queen Victoria. One night at table he related the incidents of that dinner with a delightful exactness that might have pleased her Britannic Majesty could she have listened.