If you put your finger on the map of the Malay Peninsula an inch or two from its exact centre, you will find a river in Pahang territory which has its rise in the watershed that divides that State from Kelantan and Trengganu. This river is called the Tembeling, and it is chiefly remarkable for the number of its rapids and the richness of its gutta-bearing forests. Its inhabitants are a ruffianly lot of Malays, who are preyed upon by a family of _Wans_, a semi-royal set of n.o.bles who do their best to live up to their traditions. Below the rapids the natives are chiefly noted for the quaint pottery that they produce from the clay which abounds there, and the rude shapes and ruder tracery of their vessels have probably suffered no change since the days when Solomon's fleets sought gold and peafowl and monkeys in the jungles of the Peninsula, as everybody knows. Above the rapids the Malays plant enough _gambir_ to supply the wants of the whole betel-chewing population of Pahang, and, as the sale of this commodity wins them a few dollars annually, they are too indolent to plant their own rice. This grain, which is the staple of all Malays, without which they cannot live, is therefore sold to them by down river natives, at the exorbitant price of half a dollar the bushel.

A short distance up stream, and midway between the mouth and the big rapids, there is a straggling village, called Ranggul, the houses of which, made of wattled bamboos and thatched with palm leaves, stand on piles, amid the groves of cocoa-nut and areca-nut palms, varied by clumps of smooth-leaved banana trees. The houses are not very close together, but a man can call from one to the other with ease; and thus the cocoa-nuts thrive, which, as the Malays say, grow not with pleasure beyond the sound of the human voice. The people of the village are not more indolent than other Malays. They plant a little rice, when the season comes, in the swamps behind the village. They work a little jungle produce, when the pinch of poverty drives them to it, but, like all Malays, they take life sufficiently easily. If you chance to go into the village of Ranggul, during any of the hot hours of the day, you will find most of its occupants lying about in their dark, cool houses, engaged upon such gentle mental tasks as may be afforded by whittling a stick, or hacking slowly at the already deeply scored threshold-block, with their clumsy wood-knives. Sitting thus, they gossip with a pa.s.sing neighbour, who stops to chatter as he sits propped upon the stair ladder, or they croak s.n.a.t.c.hes of song, with some old-world refrain to it, and, from time to time, break off to cast a word over their shoulders to the wife in the dim background near the fireplace, or to the little virgin daughter, carefully secreted on the shelf overhead, in company with a miscellaneous collection of dusty, grimy rubbish, the disused lumber of years. Nature has been very lavish to the Malay, and she has provided him with a soil which returns a maximum of food for a minimum of grudging labour. The cool, moist fruit groves call aloud to all mankind to come and revel in their fragrant shade during the parching hours of mid-day, and the Malay has caught the spirit of his surroundings, and is very much what Nature has seen fit to make him.

Some five-and-thirty years ago, when Che' Wan ahmad, now better known as Sultan ahmad Maatham Shah, was collecting his forces in Dungun, preparatory to making his last and successful descent into the Tembeling valley, whence to overrun and conquer Pahang, the night was closing in at Ranggul. A large house stood, at that time, in a somewhat isolated position, within a thickly-planted compound, at one extremity of the village. In this house, on the night of which I write, seven men and two women were at work on the evening meal. The men sat in the centre of the floor, on a white mat made from the plaited leaves of the _mengkuang_ palm, with a plate piled with rice before each of them, and a bra.s.s tray, holding various little china bowls of curry, placed where all could reach it. They sat cross-legged, with bowed backs, supporting themselves on their left arms, the left hand lying flat on the mat, and being so turned that the outspread fingers pointed inwards. With the fingers of their right hands they messed the rice, mixing the curry well into it, and then swiftly carried a large handful to their mouths, skilfully, without dropping a grain. The women sat demurely, in a half kneeling position, with their feet tucked away under them, and ministered to the wants of the men. They said never a word, save an occasional exclamation, when they drove away a lean cat that crept too near to the food, and the men also held their peace. There was no sound to be heard, save the hum of the insects out of doors, the deep note of the bull-frogs in the rice swamps, and the unnecessarily loud noise of mastication made by the men as they ate.

When the meal was over the women carried what was left to a corner near the fireplace, and there fell to on such of the viands as their lords had not consumed. If you had looked carefully, however, you would have seen that the cooking-pots, over which the women ruled, still held a secret store for their own consumption, and that the quality of the food in this _cache_ was by no means inferior to that which had been allotted to the men. In a land where women wait upon themselves, and have none to attend to their wants, or forestall their wishes, they very soon acquire an extremely good notion of how to look after themselves; and, since they have never known a state of society in which women are treated as they are amongst ourselves, they do not repine, and seem, for the most part, to be sufficiently bright, light-hearted, and happy.

The men, meanwhile, had each rolled up a quid of betel-nut, taking the four ingredients carefully from the little bra.s.s boxes in the wooden tray before them, and having prepared cigarettes of Javenese tobacco, with the dried shoots of the _nipah_ palm for wrappers, had at length broken the absorbed silence, which had held them fast while the matter of the meal was occupying their undivided attention.

The talk flitted lightly over many subjects; for a hearty meal, and the peace of soul which repletion brings with it, are not conducive to concentration of attention, nor yet to activity of mind. The Malay, too, is always superficial, and talk among natives generally plays round facts, rather than round ideas. Che' Seman, the owner of the house, and his two sons, aw.a.n.g and Ngah, discussed the prospects of the crop then growing in the fields behind the compound. Their cousin abdollah, who chanced to be pa.s.sing the night in the house, told of a fall which his wife's aunt's brother had come by, when climbing a cocoa-nut tree. Mat, his _biras_ (for they had married two sisters, which established a definite form of relationship between them, according to Malay ideas), added a few more or less ugly details to abdollah's description of the corpse after the accident. And as this attracted the attention of the two remaining men, Potek and Ka.s.sim, who had been discussing the price of rice, and the varying chances of _getah_ hunting, the talk at this point became general. Potek and Ka.s.sim had recently returned from Dungun, where, as has been said, the present Sultan of Pahang was, at that time, collecting the force with which he afterwards successfully invaded and conquered the State. They told of all they had seen and heard, multiplying their figures with the daring recklessness that is born of unfettered imaginations, and the lack of a rudimentary knowledge of arithmetic. But even this absorbing topic could not hold the attention of their hearers for long. Before Potek and Ka.s.sim had well finished the enumeration of the heavy artillery, of the thousands of the elephants, and the tens of thousands of the followers, with which they credited the adventurous, but slender bands of ragam.u.f.fins, who followed ahmad's fortunes, Che' Seman broke into their talk with words on a subject which, at that time, was ever uppermost in the minds of the Tembeling people, and the conversation straightway drifted into the channel in which it had run, with only casual interruptions, for many weeks past.

'He of the Hairy Face[12] is with us once more,' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Che' Seman; and when this announcement had caused a dead silence to fall upon his hearers, and had even stilled the chatter of the women-folk near the fireplace, he continued:

'At the hour when the cicada is heard (sunset), I met Imam Sidik of Gemuroh, and bade him stay to eat rice, but he would not, saying that He of the Hairy Face had made his kill at Labu yesternight, and it behoved all men to be within their houses before the darkness fell. And so saying he paddled his dug-out down stream with the short quick stroke used when we race boats. Imam Sidik is a wise man, and his words are true. He of the Hairy Face spares neither priest nor prince. The girl he killed at Labu was a daughter of the _Wans_--her name Wan esah.'

[Footnote 12: _Si Podong_ = one of the names used by jungle-bred Malays to describe a tiger. They avoid using the beast's real name lest the sound of it should reach his ears, and cause him to come to the speaker.]

'That makes three-and-twenty whom He of the Hairy Face hath slain in one year of maize' (three months), said aw.a.n.g in a low fear-stricken voice.

'He touches neither goats nor kine, and men say He sucketh more blood than He eateth flesh.'

'That it is which proves Him to be the thing he is,' said Ngah.

'Thy words are true,' said Che' Seman solemnly. 'He of the Hairy Face has his origin in a man. The _Semang_--the negrits of the woods--drove him forth from among them, and now he lives solitarily in the jungles, and by night he takes upon himself the form of Him of the Hairy Face, and feasts upon the flesh of his own kind.'

'I have heard tell that it is only the men of Korinchi who have this strange power,' interposed abdollah, in the tone of one who longs to be rea.s.sured.

'Men say that they also possess the power,' rejoined Che' Seman, 'but certain it is that He of the Hairy Face was born a _Semang_,--a negrit of the woods,--and when He goeth forth in human guise he is like all other _Semangs_ to look upon. I and many others have seen him, roaming alone, naked, and muttering to himself, when we have been in the forests seeking for jungle produce. All men know that it is He who by night harries us in our villages. If one ventures to go forth from our houses in the time of darkness, to the bathing raft at the river's edge, or to tend our sick, or to visit a friend, Si Pudong is ever to be found watching, and thus the tale of his kills waxes longer and longer.'

'But men are safe from him while they sit within their houses?' asked Mat with evident anxiety.

'G.o.d alone knows,' answered Che' Seman piously, 'who can say where men are safe from Him of the Hairy Face? He cometh like a shadow, and slays like a prince, and then like a shadow he is gone! And the tale of his kills waxes ever longer and yet more long. May G.o.d send Him far from us!

Ya Allah! It is He! Listen!'

At the word, a dead silence, broken only by the hard breathing of the men and women, fell upon all within the house. Then very faintly, and far away up stream, but not so faintly but that all could hear it, and shudder at the sound, the long-drawn, howling, snarling moan of a hungry tiger broke upon the stillness. The Malays call the roar of the tiger _aum_, and the word is vividly onomatoptic, as those who have heard the sound in the jungle during the silent night watches can bear witness. All who have listened to the tiger in his forest freedom know that he has many voices wherewith to speak. He can give a barking cry, which is not unlike that of a deer; he can grunt like a startled boar, and squeak like the monkeys cowering at his approach in the branches overhead; he can shake the earth with a vibrating, resonant purr, like the sound of faint thunder in the foot-hills; he can mew and snarl like an angry wildcat; and he can roar like a l.u.s.ty lion cub. But it is when he lifts up his voice in the long-drawn moan that the jungle chiefly fears him. This cry means that he is hungry, and, moreover, that he is so sure of his kill that he cares not if all the world knows that his belly is empty. It has something strangely horrible in its tone, for it speaks of that cold-blooded, dispa.s.sionate cruelty which is only to be found in perfection in the feline race. These sleek, smooth-skinned, soft-footed, lithe, almost serpentine animals, torture with a grace of movement, and a gentleness in strength which has something in it more violently repugnant to our natures than any sensation with which the thought of the blundering charge and savage goring of the buffalo, or the clumsy kneading with giant knee-caps, that the elephant metes out to its victims, can ever inspire in us.

Again the long-drawn moaning cry broke upon the stillness. The cattle in the byre heard it and were panic-stricken. Half mad with fear, they charged the walls of their pen, bearing all before them, and in a moment could be heard in the distance plunging madly through the brushwood, and splashing through the soft earth of the _padi_ fields. The dogs whimpered and scampered off in every direction, while the fowls beneath the house set up a drowsy and discordant screeching. The folk within the house were too terror-stricken to speak, for fear, which gives voices to the animal world, renders voluble human beings dumb. And all this time the cry broke forth again and again, ever louder and louder, as He of the Hairy Face drew nearer and yet more near.

At last the cruel whining howl sounded within the very compound in which the house stood, and its sudden proximity caused Mat to start so violently that he overturned the pitch torch at his elbow, and extinguished the flickering light. The women crowded up against the men, seeking comfort by physical contact with them, their teeth chattering like castanets. The men gripped their spears, and squatted tremblingly in the half light thrown by the dying embers of the fire, and the flecks cast upon floor and wall by the faint moonbeams struggling through the interstices of the thatched roof.

'Fear nothing, Minah,' Che' Seman whispered, in a hoa.r.s.e, strange voice, to his little daughter, who nestled miserably against his breast, 'in a s.p.a.ce He will be gone. Even He of the Hairy Face will do us no harm while we sit within the house.'

Che' Seman spoke from the experience of many generations of Malays, but he knew not the nature of the strange beast with whom he had to deal.

Once more the moan-like howl broke out on the still night air, but this time the note had changed, and gradually it quickened to the ferocious snarling roar, the charge song, as the tiger rushed forward and leaped against the side of the house with a heavy jarring thud. A shriek from all the seven throats went up on the instant, and then came a scratching, tearing sound, followed by a soft, dull flop, as the tiger, failing to effect a landing on the low roof, fell back to earth. The men started to their feet, clutching their weapons convulsively, and, led by Che' Seman, they raised, above the shrieks of the frightened women, a lamentable attempt at a _sorak_, the Malayan war-cry, which is designed as much to put heart into those who utter it, as to frighten the enemy in defiance of whom it is sounded.

Mat, the man who had upset the torch and plunged the house in darkness, alone failed to add his voice to the miserable cheer raised by his fellows. Wild with fear of the beast without, he crept, un.o.bserved by the others, up into the _para_, or shelf-like upper apartment, on which Minah had been wont to sit, when strangers were about, during the short days of her virginity. This place, as is usual in most Malay houses, hardly deserved to be dignified by being termed a room. It consisted of a platform suspended from the roof in one corner of the house, and among the dusty lumber with which it was covered Mat now cowered and sought to hide himself.

A minute or two of sickening suspense followed the tiger's first unsuccessful charge. But presently the howl broke forth again, quickened rapidly to the note of the charge song, and once more the house trembled under the weight of the great animal. This time the leap of Him of the Hairy Face had been of truer aim, and a crash overhead, a shower of leaflets of thatch, and an ominous creaking of the woodwork told the cowering people in the house that their enemy had effected a landing on the roof.

The miserable thready cheer, which Che' Seman exhorted his fellows to raise in answer to the charge song of the tiger, died down in their throats. All looked upwards in deadly fascination as the thatch was torn violently apart by the great claws of their a.s.sailant. There were no firearms in the house, but the men instinctively grasped their spears, and held them ready to await the tiger's descent. Thus for a moment, as the quiet moonlight poured in through the gap in the thatch, they stood gazing at the great square face, marked with its black bars, at the flaming eyes, and the long cruel teeth framed in the hole which the claws of the beast had made. The timbers of the roof bent and cracked anew under the unwonted weight, and then, with the agility of a cat, He of the Hairy Face leaped lightly down, and was in among them before they knew. The striped hide was slightly wounded by the spears, but the shock of the brute's leap bore all who had resisted it to the floor. The tiger never stayed to use its jaws. It sat up, much in the att.i.tude of a kitten which plays with something dangled before its eyes, and the soft pit-pat of its paws, as it struck out rapidly and with unerring aim, speedily disposed of all its enemies. Che' Seman, with his two sons, aw.a.n.g and Ngah, were the first to fall. Then Iang, Che' Seman 's wife, reeled backwards against the wall, with her skull crushed out of all resemblance to any human member, by the awful strength of one of those well-aimed buffets from the fearful claws. Ka.s.sim, Potek, and abdollah fell before the tiger in quick succession, and Minah, the girl who had nestled against her father for protection, lay now under his dead body, sorely wounded, wild with terror, but still alive and conscious. Mat, cowering on the shelf overhead, breathless with fear, and gazing fascinated at the carnage going on within a few feet of him, was the only inmate of the house who remained uninjured.

He of the Hairy Face killed quickly and silently, while there were yet some alive to resist him. Then, purring gently, he drank a deep draught of blood from each of his slaughtered victims. At last he reached Che'

Seman, and Minah, seeing him approach, made a feeble effort to evade him. Then began a fearful scene, the tiger playing with, and torturing the girl, just as we all have seen a cat do with a maimed mouse. Again and again Minah crawled feebly away from her tormentor, only to be drawn back again just when escape seemed possible. Again and again she lay still in the utter inertia of exhaustion, only to be quickened into agonised movement once more by the touch of the tiger's cruel claws. Yet so cunningly did he play with her, that, as Mat described it, a time as long as it would take to cook rice had elapsed, before the girl was finally put out of her misery.

Even then He of the Hairy Face did not quit the scene of slaughter. Mat, as he lay trembling in the shelf overhead, watched the tiger, through the long hours of that fearful night, play with the mangled bodies of each of his victims in turn. He leaped from one to the other, inflicting a fresh blow with teeth or claws on their torn flesh, with all the airy, light-hearted agility and sinuous grace of a kitten playing with its shadow in the sun. Then when the dawn was breaking, the tiger tore down the door, leaped lightly to the ground, and betook himself to the jungle.

When the sun was up, an armed party of neighbours came to the house to see if ought could be done. But they found the place a shambles, the bodies hardly to be recognised, the floor-laths dripping blood, and Mat lying face downward on the shelf, with his reason tottering in the balance. The bodies, though they had been horribly mutilated, had not been eaten, the tiger having contented himself with drinking the blood of his victims, and playing his ghastly game with them till the dawn broke.

This is, I believe, the only recorded instance in the Peninsula of a tiger having dared to attack men within their closed houses; and the circ.u.mstances are so remarkable in every way, that I, for one, cannot find it in me to greatly blame the Malays for attributing the fearlessness of mankind, and the l.u.s.t for blood displayed by Him of the Hairy Face, to the fact that he owed his existence to magic agencies, and was in reality no mere wild beast, but a member of the race upon which he so cruelly preyed.

IN THE DAYS WHEN THE LAND WAS FREE

Alas, the shifting years have sped, Since we were hale and strong, Who oft have seen the hot blood shed, Nor held the deed a wrong; When the flames leap'd bright, thro' the frightened night, When the _scrak_ rang thro' the lea, When a man might fight, and when might was right, In the Days when the Land was Free.

_The Song of the Fettered Folk._

In 1873 the people of Pahang who, then as now, were ever ready to go upon the war-path, poured over the cool summits of the range that forms at once the backbone of the Peninsula and the boundary between Pahang and Selangor. They went, at the invitation of the British Government, to bring to a final conclusion the protracted struggles, in which Malay _Rajas_, foreign mercenaries, and Chinese miners had alike been engaged for years, distracting the State of Selangor, and breaking the peace of the Peninsula. A few months later, the Pahang Army, albeit sadly reduced by cholera, poured back again across the mountains, the survivors slapping their chests and their _kris_-hilts, and boasting loudly of their deeds, as befitted victorious warriors in a Malay land. The same stories are still told 'with circ.u.mstance and much embroidery,' by those who took part in the campaign, throughout the length and breadth of Pahang even unto this day.

Among the great Chiefs who led their people across the range, one of the last to go, and one of those whose heart was most uplifted by victory, was the present Mahraja Perba of Jelai, commonly called To' Raja. His own people, even at that time, gave him the t.i.tle he now bears, but the Bendahara of Pahang (since styled Sultan) had never formally installed him in the hereditary office of which he was the heir, so by the Court Faction he was still addressed as Panglima Prang Mamat.

On his arrival at Pekan, the Panglima Prang, unmindful of the fate which, at an earlier period, had befallen his brother Wan Bong, whose severed head lay buried somewhere near the palace in a nameless grave, began to a.s.sert himself in a manner which no Malay King could be expected to tolerate. Not content with receiving from his own people the semi-royal honours, which successive To' Rajas have insisted upon from the natives of the interior, Panglima Prang allowed his pride to run away with both his prudence and his manners. He landed at Pekan with a following of nearly fifty men, all wearing shoes, the spoils of war, it is said, which had fallen to his lot through the capture of a Chinese store; he walked down the princ.i.p.al street of the town with an umbrella carried by one of his henchmen; and he ascended into the King's _Balai_ with his _kris_ uncovered by the folds of his _sarong_! The enormity of these proceedings may not, perhaps, be apparent; but, in those days, the wearing of shoes of a European type, and the public use of an umbrella, were among the proudest privileges of royalty. To ascend the _Balai_ with an uncloaked weapon in one's girdle was, moreover, a warlike proceeding, which can only be compared to the snapping of fingers in the face of royalty. Therefore, when Panglima Prang left Pekan, and betook himself up river to his house in the Jelai, he left a fl.u.s.tered court, and a very angry King behind him.

But at this time there was a man in Pahang who was not slow to seize an opportunity, and in the King's anger he saw a chance that he had long been seeking. This man was Dato' Imam Prang Indera Gajah Pahang, a t.i.tle which, being interpreted, meaneth, The War Chief, the Elephant of Pahang. Magnificent and high sounding as was this name, it was found too large a mouthful for everyday use, and to the people of Pahang he was always known by the abbreviated t.i.tle of To' Gajah. He had risen from small beginnings by his genius for war, and more especially for that branch of the science which the Malays call _tipu prang_--the deception of strife--a term which is more accurately rendered into English by the word treachery, than by that more dignified epithet strategy. He had already been the recipient of various land grants from the King, which carried with them some hundreds of devoted families who chanced to live on the alienated territories; he already took rank as a great Chief; but his ambition was to become the master of the Lipis Valley, in which he had been born, by displacing the aged To' Kaya Stia-w.a.n.gsa, the hereditary Chief of the District.

To' Gajah knew that To' Kaya of Lipis, and all his people were more or less closely related to Panglima Prang, and to the Jelai natives. He foresaw that, if war was declared against Panglima Prang by the King, the Lipis people would throw in their fortunes with the former. It was here, therefore, that he saw his chance, and, as the fates would have it, an instrument lay ready to his hand.

At Kuala Lipis there dwelt in those days an old and cross-grained madman, a Jelai native by birth, who, in the days before his trouble came upon him, had been a great Chief in Pahang. He bore the t.i.tle of orang Kaya Haji, and his eldest son was named Wan Lingga. The latter was as wax in To' Gajah's hands, and when they had arranged between themselves that in the event of a campaign against Panglima Prang proving successful, Wan Lingga should replace the latter by becoming To'

Raja of Jelai, while the Lipis Valley should be allotted to To' Gajah, with the t.i.tle of Dato' Kaya Stia-w.a.n.gsa, they together approached the Bendahara on the subject.

They found him willing enough to entertain any scheme, which included the humbling of his proud va.s.sal Panglima Prang, who so lately had done him dishonour in his own capital. Moreover the Bendahara of Pahang was as astute as it is given to most men to be, and he saw that strife between the great Chiefs must, by weakening all, eventually strengthen his own hand, since he would, in the end, be the peacemaker between them. Therefore he granted a letter of authority to Wan Lingga and To'

Gajah, and thus the war began.

The people of Pahang flocked to the interior, all noisily eager to stamp out of existence the upstart Chief, who had dared to wear shoes, and to carry an umbrella in the streets of their King's capital. The aged Chief of Lipis and his people, however, clove to Panglima Prang, or To' Raja, as he now openly called himself, and the war did not prosper. To' Gajah had inspired but little love in the hearts of the men whom the Bendahara had given him for a following, and they allowed their stockades to be taken without a blow by the Jelai people, and on one occasion To' Gajah only escaped by being paddled hastily down stream concealed in the rolled up hide of a buffalo.

At last it became evident that war alone could never subdue the Jelai and Lipis districts, and consequently negotiations were opened. A Chief named the orang Kaya Pahlawan of Semantan visited To' Raja in the Jelai, and besought him to make his peace by coming to Pekan.

'Thou hast been victorious until now,' said he, 'but thy food is running low. How then wilt thou fare? It were better to submit to the Bendahara, and I will go warrant that no harm befalls thee. If the Bendahara shears off thy head, he shall only do so when thy neck has been used as a block for mine own. And thou knowest that the King loveth me.' To' Raja therefore allowed himself to be persuaded, but stipulated that Wan Lingga, who was then at Kuala Lipis, should also go down to Pekan, since if he remained in the interior he might succeed in subverting the loyalty of the Jelai people who hitherto had been faithful to To' Raja.

Accordingly Wan Lingga left Kuala Lipis, ostensibly for Pekan, but, after descending the river for a few miles, he turned off into a side stream, named the Kichan, where he lay hidden biding his time.

When To' Raja heard of this, he at first declined to continue his journey down stream, but at length, making a virtue of necessity, he again set forward, saying that he entertained no fear of Wan Lingga, since one who could hide in the forest 'like a fawn or a mouse-deer'

could never, he said, fill the seat of To' Raja of Jelai.

It is whispered, that it had been To' Gajah's intention to make away with To' Raja, on his way down stream, by means of that 'warlike' art for which, I have said, he had a special apt.i.tude; but the Jelai people knew the particular turn of the genius with which they had to deal, and consequently they remained very much on their guard. They travelled, some forty or fifty strong, on an enormous bamboo raft, with a large fortified house erected in its centre. They never parted with their arms, taking them both to bed and to bath; they turned out in force at the very faintest alarm of danger; they moored the raft in mid-stream when the evening fell; and, wonderful to relate, for Malays make bad sentinels, they kept faithful watch both by day and by night. Thus at length they won to Pekan without mishap; and thereafter they were suffered to remain in peace, no further and immediate attempts being made upon their lives.

To' Raja--or Panglima Prang as he was still called by the King and the Court Faction--remained at the capital a prisoner in all but the name.

The Bendahara declined to accord him an interview, pointedly avoided speech with him, when they chanced to meet in public, and resolutely declined to allow him to leave Pekan. This, in ancient days, was practically the King's only means of punishing a powerful va.s.sal, against whom he did not deem it prudent to take more active measures; and as, at a Malay Court, the _entourage_ of the Raja slavishly follow any example which their King may set them, the position of a great Chief living at the capital in disgrace was sufficiently isolated, dreary, humiliating, and galling.