is at the full they dance naked, in the grassy places near the salt-licks, where the
passing to-and-fro of much game has thinned the forest. The Evening Wind is
their only spouse, and through Him they conceive and bear children. Yearly are
born to them offspring, mostly women-folk whom they cherish even as we do
our young; but if, perchance, they bear a manchild, the mother slays it ere it is
well-nigh born. Thus live they, and thrive they, ever increasing and multiplying,
and their bows and blow-pipes are sometimes found by us in the deep hollows of
the woods. Larger are they than those we use, more beautifully carved, and,
moreover, they are of a truer aim. But woe to the man who meets these women,
or who dares to penetrate into the woods in which they dwell, for he will surely
die unless the ghosts give speed to his flight. Of all this tribe, I alone have seen
these women, and that when I was a young hunter, many many moons agone. I
and two others, my brothers, when hunting through the forest, passed beyond the
limits of our own woods, following the halting tracks of a wounded stag. After
much walking, and eager following of the trail, for the camp was hungry lacking
meat, we found the stag lying near a brook, killed by a larger arrow than the bow
we carry throws, and, at the same moment, we heard a loud, threatening cry in a
strange tongue. Then I, looking up, beheld a gigantic form, as of a pale-skinned
woman, breaking through the jungle, some two hundred elbow-lengths away,
and, at the same moment, my elder brother fell pierced by an arrow. I stayed to
see no more, but ran, with all my young blood tingling with fear, leaving my
brothers and the slaughtered stag, tearing through the thickets of thorn, but never
feeling them rend my skin, nor ever stopped to catch my breath or drink, until,
all wounded and breathless, covered with blood and sweat-like foam, I half fell,
half staggered to the camp of mine own people. Thereafter, for long days, I lay
'twixt life and death, screaming in fear of the dreadful form I ever fancied was
pursuing me. My brothers never again returned to camp, and I alone am left to
tell the tale.'
The old man ceased his weird story, the fear of what he thought he had seen still
apparently strong upon him. He certainly believed what he said, as also did
every person present, with the exception of my own sceptical self, and I have
often tried to find some reasonable explanation for the story. I have not
succeeded, for, even in the wildest parts of the Peninsula, the aborigines do not
shoot one another on sight, whatever they may do to bands of marauding
Malays, nor do serious quarrels ever arise between them over the division of a
little fresh meat. Judging by the scared look in his eyes, as he told the story, the
old Sĕmang had felt the fear of imminent death very close at hand that day long
ago in the quiet forests at the back of Gûnong Korbu. His brethren, too, must