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
passing neighbour, who stops to chatter as he sits propped upon the stair ladder,
or they croak snatches 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 Âhmad, now better known as
Sultân Âhmad Maätham Shah, was collecting his forces in Dûngun, preparatory
to making his last and successful descent into the Tĕmbĕling 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
mĕngkûang palm, with a plate piled with rice before each of them, and a brass
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.