Ere the moon has climbed the mountain, ere the rocks are
ribbed with light,
When the downward-dipping tails are dank and drear,
Comes a breathing hard behind thee, snuffle-snuffle through the
night—
It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear!
On thy knees and draw the bow; bid the shrilling arrow go;
In the empty mocking thicket plunge the spear;
But thy hands are loosed and weak, and the blood has left thy
cheek—
It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear!RUDYARD KIPLING'S Song of the Little Hunter.We had been sitting late in the verandah of my bungalow of Kuâla Lĭpis, which
overlooks the long and narrow reach, formed by the combined waters of the
Lĭpis and the Jĕlai. The moon had risen some hours earlier, and the river ran
white between the dark banks of jungle which seemed to fence it in on all sides.
The ill-kept garden, with the tennis-ground, that never got beyond the stage of
being dug up, and the rank grass behind the bamboo fence, were flooded with
the soft light, every tattered detail of its ugliness showing as clearly as though it
was noon. The night was very still, and the soft, scented air blew coolly round
our faces.
I had been holding forth, to the handful of men who had been dining with me, on
Malay beliefs and superstitions, while they manfully stifled their yawns. When a
man has a smattering knowledge of anything, which is not usually known to his
neighbours, it is a temptation to lecture on the subject, and, looking back, I fear
that I had been on the rostrum during the best part of that evening. I had told
them of the Pĕnangal, that horrible wraith of a woman who has died in child-
birth, and who comes to torment small children, in the guise of a fearful face and
bust, with many feet of bloody trailing entrails flying in her wake; of that weird
little white animal the Mati-ânak, that makes beast noises round the graves of
children; and of the familiar spirits that men raise up from the corpses of babes
who have never seen the light, the tips of whose tongues they bite off and
swallow, after the child has been brought back to life by magic agencies. It was
at this point that young Middleton began to cock up his ears, and I, finding that