Baboo wrenched from the guard’s grasp and glided up to my desk. The back of
his open palm went to his forehead, and his big brown eyes looked up
appealingly into mine.
“What is it, Tiger-Child?” I asked, bestowing on him the title the Malays of
Kampong Glam had given him as a perpetual reminder of his famous adventure.
Dimples came into either tear-stained cheek. He smoothed out the rents in his
small sarong, and without deigning to notice his late captor, said in a soft sing-
song voice:—
“Tuan Consul, Baboo want to go with the Heaven-Born to Pahang. Baboo six
years old,—can fight pirates like Aboo Din, the father. May Mohammed make
Tuan as odorous as musk!”
“You are a boaster before Allah, Baboo,” I said, smiling.
Baboo dropped his head in perfectly simulated contrition.
“I have thought much, Tuan.”
News had come to me that an American merchant ship had been wrecked near
the mouth of the Pahang River, and that the Malays, who were at the time in
revolt against the English Resident, had taken possession of its cargo of
petroleum and made prisoners of the crew.
I had asked the colonial governor for a guard of five Sikhs and a launch, that I
might steam up the coast and investigate the alleged outrage before appealing
officially to the British government.
Of course Baboo went, much to the disgust of Aboo Din, the syce.
I never was able to refuse the little fellow anything, and I knew if I left him
behind he would be revenged by running away.
I had vowed again and again that Baboo should stay lost the next time he
indulged in his periodical vanishing act, but each time when night came and
Aboo Din, the syce, and Fatima, the mother, crept pathetically along the veranda
to where I was smoking and steeling my heart against the little rascal, I would