THE

FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK.

KRETING, the old Sâkai slave-woman, first told

me this story, as I sat by her side on the banks of the Pêrak River, watching her deft management of her long native fishing-rod, and listening to her guttural grunts of satisfaction when she succeeded in landing anything that weighed more than half an ounce. The Malays called her Krêting (woolly-head) in derision, because her hair was not so sleek and smooth as that of their own women-folk, and that was the only name by which she had been called for well-nigh half a century. When I knew her she was repulsively ugly, lean, and bent with years and many burdens, with a loose skin that hung in pouches of dirty wrinkles, and a shock of grizzled hair which, as the village children were wont to cry after her, resembled the nest of a squirrel. Even then, after many years of captivity, she spoke Malay with a strong Sâkai accent, splitting each word up into the individual syllables of which it was composed; and even when she told the history of her life's tragedy she was far from fluent or eloquent. By dint of making her tell me the story over and over

I

again, however, by asking countless questions, by fitting what she said and what she hinted on to my own knowledge of her fellow-tribesmen and their surroundings, I contrived to piece her tale together into something like a connected whole. For the rest, the Sâkai people of the upper Plus, into whose country duty often took me in those days, told me their version of the facts, not once but many times, as is the manner of natives. Therefore I think it probable that in what follows I have not strayed far from the truth.

The Sâkai camp was pitched far up among the little straying spurs of rising ground which wander off from the mountains of the main range, and straggle out into the valleys on either hand. In front of the camp a tiny nameless stream tumbled its hurried waters down the slope to the plain below. Across the slender rivulet, and on every side as far as the straitened eye could see, there rose forest, nothing but forest, crowding groups of giant trees, underwood twenty feet in height, a tangled network of vines and creepers, the whole as impenetrable as a quickset hedge. It had been raining heavily earlier in the day, and now that evening was closing in, each branch and twig and leaf dripped slow drops of moisture persistently with a melancholy sound as of nature weeping furtively. The fires of the camp, smouldering sullenly above the damp fuel, crackled and hissed their discontent, sending wreaths of thick, blue smoke curling upward into the still air in such dense volumes that the scarlet of the flames was hardly visible even in the gloom of gathering night. In the heavens, seen overhead through the interlacing boughs, the sunlight still lingered, but the sky looked wan and woe-begone, pale and sickly.

There were a score and a half of squalid creatures occupying the little camp, men and women, and children of various ages, all members of the downtrodden aboriginal tribes of the Peninsula, creatures melancholy and miserable, thoroughly in keeping with the sodden, dreary gloom of their comfortless restingplace. All the children, and some of the younger women, were stark-naked, and the other inhabitants of the camp wore no garment save a narrow strip of bark-cloth twisted in a dirty wisp about their loins. Up here in the hills it was intensely cold, for the rain had chilled the forest lands with a dank rawness. The rude shelters of leaves and branches, under which the Sâkai had sat huddled together while the pitiless sky poured its waters upon them, had afforded no real protection from the weather, and everything in the camp was drenched and clammy. The Sâkai squatted on their heels, pressing closely one against the other, with their toes in the grey ashes, as they edged in nearer and nearer to the smoky fires. Every now and again the teeth of one or another of them would start chattering noisily, and several of the children whimpered and whined unceasingly. The women were silent, but the men kept up a constant flow of disjointed talk in queer, jerky monosyllables. Most of the Sâkai were covered from head to foot with a leprous-looking skin-disease, bred by damp jungles and poor diet; and since the wet caused the irritation to be excruciating, they tore at their skin with relentless finger-nails, like apes. The men smoked a green shredded tobacco, soft and fragrant, rolled into rude cigarettes with live leaves for their outer coating. A few yams and jungle roots were baking themselves black in the embers of the fires, and one or two fish,

stuck in the cleft of a split stick, were roasting in the centre of the clouds of smoke.

Of a sudden the stealthy tones of the men ceased abruptly, and the women fell a-quieting the complaining children with hurried maternal skill. All the folk in the camp were straining their ears to listen. Any one whose senses were less acute than those of the Sâkai would have heard no sound of any kind, save only the tinkling babble of the little stream, and the melancholy drip of the wet branches in the forest; but, after a moment's silence, one of the elder men spoke.

"Tis a man," he said, and a look of relief flitted over the sad, timorous faces of his companions. Even the Sâkai, whose place is very near the bottom in the scale of humanity, has his own notions of self-esteem, and he only speaks of those of his own race as men; all other human beings are gobs (strangers).

Presently a shrill cry, half scream, half hoot, such as you might imagine to be the war-whoop of a Red Indian, sounded from the forest about a quarter of a mile downstream. Even a European could have heard this, so clear and penetrating was its note; and he would have added that it was the cry of the argus-pheasant. A Malay, well though he knows his jungles, would have given the sound a similar interpertation; but the Sâkai knew better. Their acute perceptions could detect without difficulty the indefinable difference between the real cry of the bird and this ingenious imitation, precisely similar though they would have seemed to less sharpened senses; and a moment later an argus-pheasant sent back an answering whoop from the centre of the fire over which the old man who had spoken sat crouching. The yell

was immediately answered from a hill-top a few hundred yards up-stream, and the old fellow clicked in his throat, like a demoralised clock-spring. It was his way of laughing, for a wild bird had answered his call. It had failed to detect the deception which the Sâkai could recognise so easily.

In about a quarter of an hour two young Sâkai, with blowpipes over their shoulders, rattan knapsacks on their backs, and bamboo spears in their hands, passed into the camp in single file. They emerged from the forest like shadows cast upon a wall, flitting swiftly on noiseless feet, and squatted down by the fire without a word. They rolled cigarettes, lighted them from a flaming firebrand, and fell to smoking them in silence. Then the old man who had answered their signal spoke a question in jerky monosyllables without even glancing at them. The elder of the two newcomers grunted a response, with his eyes still fixed upon the smoky fire.

"The Gobs were at Legap, three, and three, and three, many Gobs," he said. The Sâkai's knowledge of notation does not extend beyond the numeral three; a larger number than that must be expressed by kerp'”, which means many.

"May they be devoured by a tiger!" snarled the old man. It is the worst curse of which the Sâkai, who fears his house-mate the tiger more than anything on earth, has any conception.

"They are hunting," went on the youngest; "hunting men, and To' Pangku Mûda and To' Stîa are with them." The speaker split up these Malay names into monosyllables, suiting the sounds to the disjointed articulation of his own people.

The listening Sâkai grunted in chorus, in token