In Court and Kampong _ Being Tales and Ske - Sir Hugh Charles Clifford

also that they entered into a compact with the Malays of Lâsak to aid in hunting
us through the woods and selling all of our people whom they could catch into
slavery? We of the forests had little fear of the Malays, for we could make blind
trails that they could never follow, and could hide our camps in the shady places,
where they could never find them. The Malays were wont, when they could trace
us, to surround our camps at nightfall, and attack when the dawn was about to
break, but many and many a time, when we were so surrounded, we made shift
by night to escape from the circle which hemmed us in. How did we win out?
What then are the trees made for? Has the Tûan never heard of the bridges of the
forest people that the Malays call tâli tĕnau? When darkness was over the forest,
the young men would ascend the trees, and stretch lines of rattan from bough to
bough, over the places where the trees were too far apart for a woman to leap,
and when all was ready, we would climb into the branches, carrying our
cooking-pots and all that we possessed, the women bearing their babies at their
breasts, and the little children following at their mothers' heels. Thus, treading
shrewdly on the lines of rattan, we would pass from tree to tree, and so escape
from our enemies. What does the Tûan say? That it is difficult and hazardous to
walk by night on slender lines stretched among the tree-tops? No, the matter was
easy. Where there is room to set a foot, why need a man fear to fall? And thus
we baffled the Malays, and won our freedom. But when the Sâkai dogs aided the
Malays, matters were changed indeed. They would sit in the tree-tops, the whole
night through, calling one to another when we tried to break away; and, by day,
they would track our foot-prints through places where no Malay might follow;
and no trail was so blind but that the Sâkai could see the way it tended. Men said
that they served the Malays in this manner that thereby they might preserve their
own women-folk from captivity. But I know not. The Sâkai live in houses, and
plant growing things—like the Malays. They know much of the lore of the
forest, but many secrets of the jungle which are well known to us are hidden
from their eyes. Yea, even though the fair valley of the Plus is now possessed by
them, and the mountain of Korbu is now their home as it was once our own, the
spirits of the hills and streams are still our friends, and they teach not their
secrets to the strangers. How should it not be so? Our tribe springs from the
mountain of Korbu, and the hills of Lĕgap; theirs from the broad forests towards
the rising sun, beyond the Kinta valley. No tribe but ours knows of the forests at
the back of Gûnong Korbu, nor of the doom, which, in the fulness of time, will
fall upon the Sâkai. Beyond that great peak, in the depths of the silent forest
places, there lives a tribe of women, fair of face and form, taller than men, paler
in colour, stronger, bolder. This is the tribe that is to avenge us upon those who
have won our hunting grounds. These women know not men; but when the moon