A Tale of the Malacca Jungle
Aboo Din’s first-born, Baboo, was only four years old when he had his famous
adventure with the tiger he had found sleeping in the hot lallang grass within the
distance of a child’s voice from Aboo Din’s bungalow.
For a long time before that hardly a day had passed but Aboo-Din, who was our
syce, or groom, and wore the American colors proudly on his right arm, came in
from the servants’ quarters with an anxious look on his kindly brown face and
asked respectfully for the tuan (lord) or mem (lady).
“What is it, Aboo Din?” the mistress would inquire, as visions of Baboo
drowned in the great Shanghai jar, or of Baboo lying crushed by a boa among
the yellow bamboos beyond the hedge, passed swiftly through her mind.
“Mem see Baboo?” came the inevitable question.
It was unnecessary to say more. At once Ah Minga, the “boy”; Zim, the cook;
the kebuns (gardeners); the tukanayer (water-boy), and even the sleek Hindu
dirzee, who sat sewing, dozing, and chewing betel-nut, on the shady side of the
veranda, turned out with one accord and commenced a systematic search for the
missing Baboo.
Sometimes he was no farther off than the protecting screen of the “compound”
hedge, or the cool, green shadows beneath the bungalow. But oftener the
government Sikhs had to be appealed to, and Kampong Glam in Singapore
searched from the great market to the courtyards of Sultan Ali. It was useless to
whip him, for whippings seemed only to make Baboo grow. He would lisp
serenely as Aboo Din took down the rattan withe from above the door, “Baboo
baniak jahat!” (Baboo very bad!) and there was something so charmingly
impersonal in all his mischief, that we came between his own brown body and