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Both public and private resentment ran amok, and thus it was that the immortal poet's belauding of the immortal Emperor became linked to the ignominy of being accused of gross immorality. The reaction against this eccentric being was a fanaticism.
In either case he chooses rather to "amok." The great staples of the trade of Lombock as well as of Bali are rice and coffee; the former grown on the plains, the latter on the hills. The rice is exported very largely to other islands of the Archipelago, to Singapore, and even to China, and there are generally one or more vessels loading in the port.
When the cry "amok! amok!" is raised, people fly to the right and left for shelter, for after the blinded madman's kris has once "drank blood," his fury becomes ungovernable, his sole desire is to kill; he strikes here and there; men fall along his course; he stabs fugitives in the back, his kris drips blood, he rushes on yet more wildly, blood and murder in his course; there are shrieks and groans, his bloodshot eyes start from their sockets, his frenzy gives him unnatural strength; then all of a sudden he drops, shot through the heart, or from sudden exhaustion, clutching his bloody kris even in the act of rendering up his life.
And Gwynne knew. This time the hot blood was pounding in his head. He felt as he imagined madmen did when about to run amok. Or quite as primitive as any Californian of the surging "Fifties."
"Amok!" sprang from every man's lips, while women and children, and those too aged to take part in the wild saturnalia of blood that was to follow, scattered like doves before a hawk. With the rapidity of a Malayan tiger, the crazed man leaped from one to another, dealing deadly strokes with his merciless weapon, right and left.
By far the greater number of Malay âmok results from a condition of mind which is described in the vernacular by the term sâkit hâti sickness of liver that organ, and not the heart, being regarded as the centre of sensibility.
From the terrified appearance of some of the approaching crowd and the maniac shouts in rear, it was evident that a man thus possessed of the spirit of amok was venting his fury on them. Another minute and he drew near, brandishing a kriss that dripped with the gore of those whom he had already stabbed. Catching sight of the white men he made straight for them.
There was a swift rush in the darkness, a crashing among the rubber-vines, a short, quick snarl, and then all was still. If you run amok in Malaya, you may kill your enemy or your dearest friend, but you will be krissed in the end like a pariah dog. Every man, woman, and child will turn his hand against you, from the mother who bore you to the outcast you have befriended.
Instead of surrendering tamely the inspired madmen in the cars ran amok and played a merry game of follow-my-leader up and down and round and through the ranks of the enemy, until they had fired off most of their ammunition.
All Malays have the greatest horror of suicide, and I know of no properly authenticated case in which a male Malay has committed such an act, but I have known several who ran âmok when a white man, under similar circumstances, would not improbably have taken his own life.
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