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These men looked superb in their red dresses and turbans, although the Malays are anything but a handsome race. Their hospitality was very graceful. Many of the wealthier Mohammedans, though they don't drink wine, keep it for their Christian guests, and they offered us champagne, which is supposed to be an irresistible temptation to the Christian palate.
The quarters of the crew are aft; and I was surprised to see how clean and neat everything on board was kept, the more so that the ship's company consisted entirely of Malays, who are proverbially careless and dirty in these matters. She had but two European officers, the captain and engineer.
In these kampongs the people have music, singing, story-telling, games, and religious ceremonies, perhaps the most important of all. I have not heard that the Perak Malays differ in their religious observances from the other Malays of the Peninsula. It seems that before "a parish" can be formed there must be forty-four houses.
The Achinese differ much in their persons from the other Sumatrans, being in general taller, stouter, and of darker complexions. They are by no means in their present state a genuine people, but thought, with great appearance of reason, to be a mixture of Battas and Malays, with chulias, as they term the natives of the west of India, by whom their ports have in all ages been frequented.
Their frames are lithe and robust, their chests are broad, their hands are small and refined, and their feet are thick and short. The men are not handsome, and the women are decidedly ugly. Both sexes look old very early. The Malays undoubtedly must be numbered among civilized peoples. They live in houses which are more or less tasteful and secluded.
There are no Malays there to impede our progress by their lies and their intrigues; and, God willing, these rivers shall be the great arteries by which civilization shall be circulated to the heart of Borneo. "14th. The Dyaks of Tumma, a runaway tribe from Sadong, came down last night, as Bandar Cassim of Sadong wishes still to extract property from them.
But the encounter, badly as it had gone with the Malays, had had its effects among the defenders of the place. The major had an ugly gash in his left arm delivered by a knife-bladed spear. Billy Widgeon's ear was cut through, and he had a slight prick in his right arm, while one of the other men had a spear stab in the left leg.
Thus all looked well for the future when Wan Lingga set out, just before sun-down, from his house at Âtok to attack To’ Kâya Stia-wangsa at Pĕnjum. The latter village was at that time inhabited by more Chinese than Malays.
On the contrary, all the evidence was in favour of the assumption that her people had been taken completely by surprise most probably during the night; that she had been boarded by pirates, Malays or Chinese, all hands ruthlessly massacred, and the ship then plundered and set on fire.
In another hour we were nine miles from Singapore and near our first "beat." Major Rich had sent his shikaris on the night before to collect beaters, so that when we arrived we were welcomed by a small army of Klings, Tamils, and Malays, and the usual sprinkling of pariah dogs. A wild, strange set are these beaters. They toil not, neither do they spin.
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