opium pipe. Tŭngku Aminâh was thus left at liberty to do whatsoever she
wished; and accordingly, at about eleven o'clock that night, she sallied forth,
from within the stone wall which surrounded her mother's palace, at the head of
her army.
It was at this moment that word was brought to me that strange things were
toward, and I, and the Malays who were with me, ran out to our compound
fence, and witnessed all that ensued with our eyes glued to the chinks in the
plaited bamboos.
Presently the army came pouring down the street in the pale moonlight, and
halted in front of my compound, which chanced to face the house at that time
occupied by Tŭngku Indut, the door of which abutted on the main thoroughfare.
Tŭngku Aminâh led the van, strutting along with an arrogant and truculent
swagger most laughable to see. She was dressed for the occasion after the
fashion of the Malay warrior. Her body was encased in a short-sleeved, tight-
fitting fighting jacket, which only served to emphasise the femininity of her bust.
She wore striped silk breeches reaching to the middle of her shins; a silk sârong
was folded short about her waist; and her thick hair was tucked away beneath a
head handkerchief twisted into a peak in the manner called tanjak. At her belt
she carried a kris, and also, a smaller dagger, called a 'pepper-crusher' in the
vernacular, and in her hand she held a drawn sword, which she brandished as she
walked. At her back came some three hundred women, moving down the street
with that queer half-tripping, half-running gait, which Malay women always
affect when they go abroad in a crowd at the heel of their Princess. The way in
which they run into and press against one another, on such occasions, together
with the little quick short steps they take, always reminds me of young chickens
trying to seek shelter under their mother's wing. The army was wonderfully and
fearfully armed. Some of the more fortunate had spears and daggers; one or two
carried old swords; but the majority were armed with weapons borrowed from
the cook-house. The axes and choppers, used for breaking up firewood, were the
best of these arms, but the number of these was limited, most of Tŭngku
Aminâh's gallant three hundred being provided with no better weapons than the
kandar sticks, on which water pails are carried; spits made of wood hardened in
the fire; cocoa-nut scrapers lashed to sticks; and a few old pocket-knives and
fish-spears. What they lacked in equipment, however, they made up in noise, one
and all combining to raise an indescribable and deafening babel.
As they halted before Tŭngku Indut's house, the shrill screams of defiance from
three hundred dainty throats pierced my ear-drums like a steam siren, and they