He shook his angry old arm at Wan Lingga, shouted a withering curse, took one
sad look at his blazing roof-tree, and then plunged into the forest.
When the looting was over, Wan Lingga's people dispersed in all directions.
Nothing, they knew, fails like failure, and the Lĭpis people, who would have
feared to avenge the outrage had Wan Lingga been successful, would now, they
feared, wreak summary punishment on those who had dared to attack their
Chief. Wan Lingga, finding himself deserted, fled down stream, there to suffer
all that he had foreseen and dreaded during that march through the silent forests.
His mind gave way under the strain put upon it by the misery of his position at
Pĕkan. The man who had failed was discredited and alone. His former friends
stood aloof, his enemies multiplied exceedingly. So when the madness, which
was in his blood, fell upon him at Pĕkan, he was thrust into a wooden cage,
where he languished for years, tended as befits the madman whom the Malay
ranks with the beasts.
When he regained his reason, the politics of the country had undergone a
change, and his old ambitious dreams had faded away for ever. His old enemy
To’ Râja, whom he had sought to displace, was now ruling the Jĕlai, and
enjoying every mark of the King's favour. Domestic troubles in the royal
household had led the King to regard the friendship of this Chief as a matter of
some importance, and Wan Lingga's chances of preferment were dead and
buried.
He returned to his house at Âtok, where he lived, discredited and unhonoured,
the object of constant slights. He spent his days in futile intrigues and plots,
which were too impotent to be regarded seriously, or as anything but subjects for
mirth, and, from time to time, his madness fell upon him, and drove him forth to
wallow with the kine, and to herd with the beasts in the forest.
At last, in 1891, he resolved to put away the things of this world, and set out on
the pilgrimage to Mecca. All was ready for his departure on the morrow, and his
brethren crowded the little house at Âtok to wish him god-speed. But in the night
the madness fell upon him once more, and rising up he ran âmok through his
dwelling, slaying his wife and child, and wounding one of his brothers. Then he
fled into the forest, and after many days was found hanging dead in the fork of a
fruit-tree. He had climbed into the branches to sleep, and in his slumbers had
slipped down into the fork where he had become tightly wedged. With his
impotent arms hanging on one side of the tree, and his legs dangling limply on
the other, he had died of exhaustion, alone and untended, without even a rag to