mighty blowing and snorting of the breathless bulls, lift succeeds lift with
amazing rapidity. The green turf is stamped into mud, by the great hoofs of the
labouring brutes, and at length one bull owns himself to be beaten. Down goes
his head,—that sure sign of exhaustion,—and in a moment, he has turned round,
and is off in a bee-line, hotly pursued by the victor. The chase is never a long
one, as the conqueror always abandons it at the end of a few hundred yards, but
while it lasts, it is fast and furious, and woe betide the man who finds himself in
the way of either of the excited animals.
Mr. Kipling has told us all about the Law of the Jungle,—which after all is only
the code of man, adapted to the use of the beasts, by Mr. Rudyard Kipling,—but
those who know the ways of buffaloes, are aware that they possess one very well
recognised law. This is 'Thou shalt not commit trespass.' Every buffalo-bull has
his own ground; and into this no other bull willingly comes. If he is brought
there to do battle, he fights with very little heart, and is easily vanquished by an
opponent of half his strength and bulk, who happens to be fighting on his own
land. When bulls are equally matched, they are taken to fight on neutral ground.
When they are badly matched, the land owned by the weaker is selected for the
scene of the contest. This is an interesting fact, in its way, as it tends to prove
that it is not only the unhappy Malay of Malacca who feels that he is born
possessing some rights in the soil from which he springs, and on which he lives,
moves, and has his being.
All these fights are brutal, and in time they will, we trust, be made illegal. To
pass a prohibitionary regulation, however, without the full consent of the Chiefs
and people of Pahang, would be a distinct breach of the understanding on which
British Protection was accepted by them. The Government is pledged not to
interfere with native customs, and the sports in which animals are engaged are
among the most cherished institutions of the people of Pahang. To fully
appreciate the light in which any interference with these things would be viewed
by the native population, it is necessary to put oneself in the position of a keen
member of the Quorn, who saw Parliament making hunting illegal, on the
grounds that the sufferings inflicted on the fox, rendered it an inhuman pastime.
As I have said in a former chapter, the natives of Pahang are, in their own way,
very keen sportsmen indeed; and, when all is said and done, it is doubtful
whether hunting is not more cruel than anything which takes place in a Malay
cock-pit or bull-ring. The longer the run, the better the sport, and more intense
and prolonged the agony of the fox, that strives to run for his life, even when he
is so stiff with exertion, that he can do little more than roll along. All of us have,