THE FLIGHT OF CHÊP, THE BIRD
When my foe is in my hands,
When before me pale he stands,
When he finds no means to fight,
When he knows that death awaits him
At the hands of one who hates him,
And his looks are wild with fright;
When I stare him in the eyes,
Watch the apple fall and rise
In the throat his hard sobs tear;
O, I'll mark his pain with pleasure,
And I'll slay him at my leisure,
But I'll kill, and will not spare.The Song of the Savage Foeman.In a large Sâkai camp on the Jĕlai river, at a point some miles above the last of
the scattered Malay villages, the annual Harvest Home was being held one
autumn night in the Year of Grace 1893. The occasion of the feast was the same
as that which all tillers of the soil are wont to celebrate with bucolic rejoicings,
and the name, which I have applied to it, calls up in the mind of the exile many a
well-loved scene in the quiet country land at Home. Again he sees the loaded
farm carts labouring over the grass or rolling down the leafy lanes, again the
smell of the hay is in his nostrils, and the soft English gloaming is stealing over
the land. The more or less intoxicated reapers astride upon the load exchange
their barbarous badinage with those who follow on foot; the pleasant glow of
health, that follows upon a long day of hard work in the open air, warms the
blood; and in the eyes of all is the light of expectation, born of a memory of the
good red meat, and the lashings of sound ale and sour cider, awaiting them at the
farmhouse two miles across the meadows.
But in the distant Sâkai country the Harvest Home has little in common with
such scenes as these. The pâdi planted in the clearing, hard by the spot in which