the Spring of the year; and the King and his favourite concubines had betaken
themselves up-river to snare turtle-doves, and to drowse away the hours in the
cool flowering fruit groves, and under the shade of the lilac-coloured bûngor
trees. Therefore the youths and maidens in the palace were having a good time,
and were gaily engaged in sowing the whirlwind, with a sublime disregard for
the storm, which it would be theirs to reap, when the King returned to punish. As
the vernacular proverb has it, the cat and the roast, the tinder and the spark, and a
boy and a girl are ill to keep asunder; and consequently my friends about the
palace were often in trouble, by reason of their love affairs, even when the King
was at hand; and on his return, after he had been absent for a day or two, there
was generally the very devil to pay. Perhaps, on this occasion, the extreme heat
had something to do with it, and made hot blood surge through young veins with
unwonted fury, for things went even worse than usual, and, after a week of
flagrant and extraordinary ill-doing, Tŭngku Indut, one of the King's sons, put
the finishing touch to it all, by eloping with no less than four of his father's
choicest dancing girls!
Now, these girls were as the apple of her eye to Tŭngku Indut's half-sister,
Tŭngku Aminâh. They belonged to her mother's household, and had been trained
to dance from earliest infancy, with infinite care and pains. Nor had they attained
their present degree of efficiency, without the twisting back of tortured fingers,
and sundry other gentle punishments, dear to Malay ladies, being frequently
resorted to, in order to quicken their intelligence. That her brother should now
carry off these girls, after all the trouble which had been expended upon their
education, was a sore offence to Tŭngku Aminâh; and that the girls themselves
were very willing captives, and had found a princely lover, while she remained
unwedded, did not tend to soothe her gentle woman's breast. Her mother was
also very wroth, and sent threatening messages to Tŭngku Indut, presaging blood
and thunder, and other grievous trouble when the King returned. Tŭngku Indut,
however, resolutely declined to give the girls up. He knew that he had gone so
far that no tardy amends could now cover his ill-deeds, and, as he had a fancy for
the girls, he decided to enjoy the goods the gods had sent him until his father
came back, and the day of reckoning arrived. His stepmother, therefore, resigned
herself to await the King's return; but Tŭngku Aminâh could not brook delay,
and she resolved to attack Tŭngku Indut in his house, and to wrest the girls from
him by force of arms.
Circumstances favoured her, as her mother, who was the only person capable of
thwarting her project, was ill with fever, and had retired early to her bed and her