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They had slipped into the gathering, well concealed beneath enshrouding green sarongs, but Piang's quick eye had detected them before they had a good start. "Piang has saved us from a terrible row, boys," said Sergeant Greer, and when the wounded were cared for, the rough soldiers tossed the graceful boy on their shoulders and paraded through the camp, much to the delight of the hero.
A traffic in Birmingham manufactured krises and knives is done at Djocjakarta and Soerakarta, as well as at Samarang, Sourabaya and Batavia, and anyone who wishes to make a collection of native weapons should be careful to have the assistance of an expert to detect the sham from the real. The same remark applies to the purchase of sarongs.
I think Aha! my friends, why you not wait long enough before you shoot? This is not yet gelungen. Oh no! I get hold of my revolver with my right hand quiet quiet. After all, there were only seven of these rascals. They get up from the grass and start running with their sarongs tucked up, waving spears above their heads, and yelling to each other to look out and catch the horse, because I was dead.
No two sarongs are alike, and the painted battek, notwithstanding the simplicity of the cotton background, represents an amount of labour and finish which makes the archaic garment a costly, though almost indestructible production.
There were Moro chiefs, looking world-wearied and indifferent, followed by their attendant slaves; there were thrifty Moros willing to sell one anything from a kris or a barong to the very clothes on their backs; there were handsome young Moro blades, who stared shyly at the strange white faces and chatted volubly the while in their soft Malay tongue; there were Philippine market women in camisa and panuela, some of them carrying large, flat baskets of vegetables or fruits on their heads, the green of ripe oranges and bananas making an effective splash of colour above their dusky hair; there were a few, a very few, Moro women, as I have said before, and they wrapped themselves more closely in their sarongs as we approached, smiling at us broadly with the utmost friendliness, their blackened teeth behind red, betel-stained lips reminding one irresistibly of watermelon seeds in the fruit.
At seven, came in the Madrassee, Babu, with a cluster of bananas, and after him, two Malays, in red sarongs, who brushed and dusted all my clothes as slowly as they could men of four races in attendance before I was up in the morning!
In the clear sky overhead the glorious Eastern stars were shining steadfastly, and at our feet a tiny stream pattered busily on the pebbles of its bed. Around the fire, and reddened by its light, sat or lay my three Malays, bare to the waist, but clothed in their bright sârongs and loose short trousers.
She ransacked a great cedar chest, a table, shelves, boxes, and strewed the contents on the floor, silk scarfs, shining Benares brass, Chinese silver, vivid sarongs from the Preanger regency, Kyoto cloisonné, a wild heap of plunder from the bazaars of all the nations where Gilly's meagre earnings had been squandered.
At the windows of a house under which we stood, women, who for some reason did not mingle with the others of the village, peered down at us curiously, some holding up their sarongs to cover all but the eyes, and some frankly interested, with uncovered faces; while still other creatures, of nightmare ugliness, their skins plastered with a white flour paste, their eyebrows shaved, and their teeth newly blackened and filed into shape, incurred the displeasure of their respective lords and masters by appearing at the window even for a few moments at a time, it not being Moro etiquette that these recent brides of the neighbourhood should be seen until a later period.
Two or three of the long, skirt-like sarongs the little woman tried on then and there, that we might get the effect of them when worn; and with her creamy skin and big, dark eyes, she looked so attractive in the barbaric colours that we could not resist telling her the Moro dress was even more becoming than the European.
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