From the first this man had thrown in his lot with his kinsman To’ Râja, and,
unlike him, he had declined to allow himself to be persuaded to visit the capital
when the war came to an end. Thus he continues to live at the curious little
village of Pĕnjum, on the Lĭpis river, and, so long as he was present in person to
exert his influence upon the people, Wan Lingga found it impossible to make
any headway against him.
These things were reported by Wan Lingga to To’ Gâjah, and by the latter to the
Bĕndăhâra. The result was an order to Wan Lingga, charging him to attack To’
Kâya Stia-wangsa by night, and to slay him and all his house. With To’ Kâya
dead and buried, and To’ Râja a State prisoner at the capital, the game which To’
Gâjah and Wan Lingga had been playing would at least be won. The Lĭpis would
fall to the former, and the Jĕlai to the latter as their spoils of war; and the people
of these Districts, being left 'like little chicks without the mother hen,' would
acquiesce in the arrangement, following their new Chiefs as captives of their
bows and spears.
Thus all looked well for the future when Wan Lingga set out, just before sun-
down, from his house at Âtok to attack To’ Kâya Stia-wangsa at Pĕnjum. The
latter village was at that time inhabited by more Chinese than Malays. It was the
nearest point on the river to the gold mines of Jâlis, and at the back of the squalid
native shops, that lined the river bank, a well-worn footpath led inland to the
Chinese alluvial washings. Almost in the centre of the long line of shops and
hovels which formed the village of Pĕnjum, stood the thatched house in which
To’ Kâya Stia-wangsa lived, with forty or fifty women, and about a dozen male
followers. The house was roofed with thatch. Its walls were fashioned from
plaited laths of split bamboo, and it was surrounded by a high fence of the same
material. This was the place which was to be Wan Lingga's object of attack.
A band of nearly a hundred men followed Wan Lingga from Âtok. Their way lay
through a broad belt of virgin forest, which stretches between Âtok and Pĕnjum,
a distance of about half a dozen miles. The tramp of the men moving in a single
file through the jungle, along the narrow footpath, worn smooth by the passage
of countless naked feet, made sufficient noise to scare all living things from their
path. The forests of the Peninsula, even at night, when their denizens are afoot,
are not cheerful places. Though a man lie very still, so that the life of the jungle
is undisturbed by his presence, the weird night noises, that are borne to his ears,
only serve to emphasise the solitude and the gloom. The white moonlight
straggles in patches through the thick canopy of leaves overhead, and makes the
shadows blacker and more awful by the contrast of light and shade. But a night