O, Si Jambu Rakai, accept this present from Her Highness Princess Rundok,
from Java:^298
If you refuse to accept it,
Within two days or three
You shall be ... choked to death with blood,
Choked to death by Her Highness Princess Rundok, from Java.
But if you accept it,
A reach up-stream or a reach down-stream, there do you await me;
It is not my Word, it is King Solomon’s Word;
If you are carried down-stream see that you incline up-stream,
If you are carried up-stream see that you incline down-stream,
By virtue of the Saying of King Solomon, ‘There is no god but God,’” etc.
Then take a canoe paddle (to symbolise the crocodile’s tail) and some strong
thread, fasten one end of the thread to the front of the floating platform, and the
other end to the bow of your boat, back water till it grows taut, and strike the
surface of the water thrice with the aforesaid “mock” crocodile’s tail. If the first
time you strike it the sound is clearest (tĕrek bunyi) it is an omen that the
crocodile will swallow the bait the first day; if the second time, it will be the
second day when he does so; if the third time, it will be the third day. But every
time you strike the water you must say to yourself, “From Fatimah was your
origin” (Mani Fatimah asal’kau jadi), in order to make the crocodile bold. After
striking the water you may go home and rest; but you must get up again in any
case at about two in the afternoon (dlohor), and whatever happens you must
remember never to pass underneath a low overhanging bough (because such a
bough would resemble the bent rod of the floating platform), and never (for the
time being) to eat your curry without starting by swallowing three lumps of rice
successively. If you do this it will help the bait to slide more easily down the
crocodile’s throat, and in the same way you must never, until the brute is safely
landed, take any bones out of the meat in your curry—if you do, the wooden
cross-piece is sure to get loose and work out of the fowl—so it is just as well to
get somebody to take the bones out of your meat before you begin, otherwise
you may at any moment be compelled to choose between swallowing a bone and
losing all your labour.
I will pass on to the final capture. The crocodile has taken the bait, we will say,
and with the last of the ebb, not unfrequently in a perilously rickety boat, you go