call of the orang-utan, or the wild hillmen of the country, for they have imitated
the call of this most glorious of birds.
The shrill, never ceasing whir of the cicada hardly attracted our attention; while
the whistle and crash of a monkey that was inspecting us from his perch among
the trees above caused me to peer upward, in hopes of catching a glimpse of his
grayish outlines.
I had not had an opportunity of asking my companion for the details of his tragic
story. I turned to him, and found him watching me attentively. “Were you
listening to the call of the coo-ee?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered.
“It is the queen of birds. I will get you one. I have never shot one. They only
come out at night, and then only to disappear, but we can trap them. It will die in
captivity. That is why Solomon could not keep them, and sent for new ones
every three years.”
“What became of the woman?” I asked.
“The body of the Laksamana was thrown over the walls by the Portuguese,” he
said moodily. “It was embalmed and laid away. Two months from that day the
woman was walking outside the walls. The war was over. There was no more
gold. Three of my people sprang upon her and the Portuguese she was to marry.”
He paused for a moment and looked up at the stars, then went on in a cold,
matter-of-fact tone. “They were lashed to the headless body of the man they had
murdered, and thrown into the royal tiger-cage, by order of his Highness, Ali,
Sultan of Maur.”
I raised my curtain and threw the stub of my cigar out into the darkness, a
smothered exclamation of horror escaping my lips.
“It was the will of Allah. Good night.”
It was nearly nine o’clock the next morning before we started. Our Malays had
gone on at daybreak, to cut a path up the base of the mountain to where the open
forest began.