A Malayan Story
If you run amok in Malaya, you may perhaps kill your enemy or wound your
dearest friend, but you may be certain that in the end you will be krissed like a
pariah dog. Every man, woman, and child will turn his or her hand against you,
from the mother who bore you to the outcast you have befriended. The laws are
as immutable as fate.
Just where the great river Maur empties its vast volume of red water across a
shifting bar into the Straits of Malacca, stands the kampong of Bander Maharani.
The Sultan Abubaker named the village in honor of his dead Sultana, and here,
close down to the bank, was the palace of his nephew—the Governor, Prince
Sulliman.
A wide, red, well-paved road separated the village of thatch and grass from the
palace grounds, and ended at a wharf, up to which a steam-launch would dash
from time to time, startling the half-grown crocodiles that slept beneath the
rickety timbers.
Sometimes the little Prince Mat, the son of the Governor, came down to the
wharf and played with the children of the captain of the launch, while his Tuan
Penager, or Teacher, dozed beneath his yellow umbrella; and often, at their play,
his Excellency would pause and watch them, smiling kindly.
At such times, the captain of the launch would fall upon his face, and thank the
Prophet that he had lived to see that day. “For,” he would say, “some day he may
speak to me, and ask me for the wish I treasure.”
Then he would go back to his work, polishing the brass on the railings of his
boat, regardless of the watchful eyes that blinked at him from the mud beneath
the wharf.