little naked son pattered along at his heels, holding a tin containing bait in his
tiny hands. The boy crooned to himself, after the manner of native children, but
his father walked along in silence. Arrived at the swamp, which was now a broad
pool of water, with here and there a tuft of rank rushes showing above the
surface, Kria and his child each took a rod and began patiently angling for the
little fish. The sun crept lower and lower down the western sky, till its slanting
rays painted the surface of the pool to the crimson hue of blood. The clouds were
dyed with a thousand gorgeous tints, and the soft light of the sunset hour
mellowed all the land. Kria had seen the same sight many a hundred times
before, and he looked on it with the utter indifference to the beauties of nature,
which is one of the least attractive characteristics of Malays. If the reddened pool
at his feet suggested anything to him, it was only that the day was waning, and
that it was time to be wending his way homeward.
He began to gather up his fishing tackle, while his son, squatting on the ground,
passed a rattan cord through the fishes' gills to their mouths, so that the take
might be carried with greater ease. While they were so engaged, a slight rustle in
the high grass behind them caused both father and son to start and look round.
Not a breath of wind was blowing, but, none the less, a few feet away from
them, the tops of the grass moved slightly, as though the stalks were brushed
against by the passage of some wild animal.
'Hasten, little one,' said Kria, uneasily; 'it is a tiger.'
But, as he spoke the words, the grass was parted by human hands, and Kria
found himself looking into the wild and angry eyes of Ku-îsh, the Porcupine,
along the length of an ancient gun barrel. He had time to note the rust upon the
dulled metal, the fantastic shape of the clumsy sight, and the blue tatoo marks on
the nose and forehead of his enemy. All these things he saw mechanically, in an
instant of time, but before he had moved hand or foot the world seemed to break
in fragments around him, to the sound of a furious deafening explosion, and he
lay dead upon the sward with his skull shattered to atoms, and the bloody,
mucous strings of brain flecking the fresh green grass.
At the sight, Kria's son fled screaming along the edge of the pool, but Ku-îsh's
blood was up, and he started in pursuit. The child threw himself down in the
long grass, and, raising his little arms above his cowering head, shrieked for
mercy in his pure shrill treble voice. Ku-îsh, for answer, plunged his spear again
and again through the little writhing body, and, at the second blow, the
expression of horror and fear faded from the tender rounded face, and was