One day we crawled up the narrow, rickety ladder that led into the two by four
opening of old Wahpering’s palm-shaded home. The little punghulo or chief,
touched his forehead with the back of his open palm as we advanced cautiously
over the open bamboo floor toward his old wife, who was seated in one corner
by a low, horizontal window, weaving a sarong on a hand-loom. She looked up
pleasantly with a soft “Tabek” (Greeting), and went on throwing her shuttle
deftly through the brilliantly colored threads. The sharp bang of the dark,
kamooning-wood bar drove the thread in place and left room for another. Back
and forth flew the shuttle, and thread after thread was added to the fabric, yet no
perceptible addition seemed to be made.
“How long does it take to finish it?” I asked in Malay.
“Twenty days,” she answered, with a broad smile, showing her black, filed teeth
and syrah-stained lips.
The red and brown sarong which she wore twisted tightly up under her armpits
had cost her almost a month’s work; the green and yellow one her chief wore
about his waist, a month more; the ones she used as screens to divide the interior
into rooms, and those of the bevy of sons and daughters of all ages that crowded
about us each cost a month’s more; and yet the labor and material combined in
each represented less than two dollars of our money at the Bazaar in Singapore.
I had not the heart to take the one that she offered the mistress, but insisted on
giving in exchange a pearl-handled penknife, which the chief took, with many a
touch of his forehead, “as a remembrance of the condescension of the Orang
American Rajah.”
Wahpering’s wife was not dressed to receive us, for we had come swiftly up the
dim lagoon, over which her home was built, and had landed on the sandy beach
unannounced. Had she known that we were coming, she would have been
dressed as became the wife of the Punghulo of Pulo Seneng (Island of Leisure).
The long, black hair would have been washed beautifully clean with the juice of
limes, and twisted up as a crown on the top of her head. In it would have been
stuck pins of the deep-red gold from Mt. Ophir, and sprays of jasmine and
chumpaka. Under her silken sarong would have been an inner garment of white
cotton, about her waist a zone of beaded cloth held in front by an oval plate, and
over all would have been thrown a long, loose dressing-gown, called the kabaya,