had reached the shelter in the stern. The girl and the White Man followed, and
they all three squatted down on the creaking bamboo decking. The man sat, all
of a heap, moaning at short intervals, as Malays moan when the fever holds
them. The girl sat unconcernedly preparing a quid of betel-nut from its four
ingredients, and the White Man inhaled his cigarette and waited for them to
speak. He was trying to get the hang of the business, and to guess what had
caused two people, whom he did not know, to seek an interview with him in this
weird place, at such an untimely hour.
The girl, the moonlight told him, was pretty. She had a small, perfectly shaped
head, a wide smooth forehead, neat, glossy hair, bright, laughing eyes, with
eyebrows arched and well-defined, 'like the artificial spur of a fighting cock,' and
the pretty little hands and feet which are so common among all well-born Malay
women. The man was hideous. His shrunken and twitching face with its taut
skin, and his utterly broken, degraded, and decrepit appearance were
indescribably horrible, and the flickering of the moonlight, through the torn mat
overhead, only added to the grotesqueness of his figure.
At length the girl looked up at the White Man, and spoke:
'The Tûan knows Âwang Îtam?' she asked. Yes, the White Man knew him well,
but had not seen him for some months.
'This is he,' she said, pointing to the abject figure by her side, and her listener felt
as though she had struck him across the face. When last he had seen Âwang
Îtam, he was one of the best favoured of the King's Youths, a fine, upstanding
youngster, dressed in many-coloured silks, and with an amount of side and
swagger about him, which would have amply sufficed for a regiment of Her
Majesty's Guards. Now he half lay, half sat, on the damp decking, the most
pitiful wreck of humanity that the White Man had ever seen. What had befallen
him to cause so fearful a change? I will tell you the tale, in my own words, as the
White Man learned it from him and Bêdah, as they sat talking during the
watches of that long night.
In every Independent Malay State, there is a gang of fighting men, which
watches over the person of the King and acts as his bodyguard. It is recruited
from the sons of the chiefs, nobles, and men of the well-bred classes; and its
members follow at the heels of the King whenever he goes abroad, paddle his
boat, join with him in the chase, gamble unceasingly, do much evil in the King's
name, slay all who chance to offend him, and flirt lasciviously with the girls