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 pâdi 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, Mînah,' Che’ Sĕman whispered, in a hoarse, strange voice, to his
little daughter, who nestled miserably against his breast, 'in a space He will be
gone. Even He of the Hairy Face will do us no harm while we sit within the
house.'
Che’ Sĕman 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’
Sĕman, they raised, above the shrieks of the frightened women, a lamentable
attempt at a sôrak, 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, unobserved by the others, up into the pâra, or