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It was a wonderful curry, made by one of the Sultan's own cooks; for the Punghulo Sahak spared no expense in the marriage of this, his last daughter, and a great feast is exceedingly honorable in the eyes of the guests. Busuk's long black hair had to be done up in a marvellous chignon on the top of her head.
They had only to look out carefully for the crocodiles that glided noiselessly among the mangrove roots. One day one of Busuk's playmates was caught in the cruel jaws of a crocodile, and lost its hand. The men from the village went out into the labyrinth of roots that stood up above the flood like a huge scaffolding, and caught the man-eater with ropes of the gamooty palm.
The loom on which Busuk's mother wove the sarongs for the punghulo and for her sons stood by the side of the window, and Busuk, from the sling in which she sat on her mother's side, could see the fishing praus glide by, and also the big lumber tonkangs, and at rare intervals one of his Highness's launches.
Busuk's old aunt, who lived far away up the river Maur, near the foot of Mount Ophir, sent a yellow gold pin for the hair; her husband, the Hadji Mat, had washed the gold from the bed of the stream that rushed by their bungalow. Busuk's brother, who was a sergeant in his Highness's the Sultan's artillery at Johore, brought a tiny pair of sandals all worked in many-colored beads.
On the seventh day Busuk's head was shaven and she was named Fatima; but they called her Busuk in the kampong, and some even called her Inchi Busuk, the princess. From the low-barred window of Busuk's home she could look out on the shimmering, sunlit waters of the Straits of Malacca.
Never had such presents been seen at the birth of any other of Punghulo Sahak's children. Two days later the Imam Paduka Tuan sent Busuk's father a letter sewn up in a yellow bag. It contained a blessing for Busuk. Busuk kept the letter all her life, for it was a great thing for the high priest to do.
First, her maids washed it beautifully clean with the juice of the lime and the lather of the soap-nut; then it was combed and brushed until every hair glistened like ebony; next it was twisted up and stuck full of the quaint golden and tortoise-shell bodkins, with here and there a spray of jasmine and chumpaka. Busuk's milky-white teeth had to be filed off more than a fourth.
The band went, too, and the boys shot off guns and fire-crackers all the way, until Busuk's head swam, and she was so happy that the tears came into her eyes and trickled down through the rouge on her cheeks. So ended Busuk's childhood. She was not quite fifteen when she became mistress of her own little palm-thatched home.
Still their lives are not unhappy. Their husbands are kind and sober, and they are never destitute. They have their families about them, and hear laughter and merriment from one sunny year to another. Busuk's father-in-law is dead now, and the last time I visited Bander Bahru to shoot wild pig, Mamat was punghulo, collecting the taxes and administering the laws.
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