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Hastings, or in which you did not see Cantoo Baboo. Either the black or white side of Mr. Hastings constantly was visible to the world in every part of these transactions. With the other gentlemen, who were visible too, I have at present no dealing. Mr.
But there is one of these who comes so nearly, indeed so precisely, within this observation, that it is impossible for me to pass him by. Whoever has heard of Mr. Hastings's name, with any knowledge of Indian connections, has heard of his banian, Cantoo Baboo. This man is well known in the records of the Company, as his agent for receiving secret gifts, confiscations, and presents.
I asked, bestowing on him the title the Malays of Kampong Glam had given him as a perpetual reminder of his famous adventure. Dimples came into either tear-stained cheek. He smoothed out the rents in his small sarong, and without deigning to notice his late captor, said in a soft sing-song voice: "Tuan Consul, Baboo want to go with the Heaven-Born to Pahang.
There was the pathetic little quaver in his voice that I knew so well. "But they were monkeys, Baboo, not pirates." Baboo shrugged his brown shoulders and kept his eyes on my feet. "Allah is good!" he muttered. Allah was good; they might have been pirates. The snarl of the tiger was growing more insistent and near. I gave the order, and the boat backed out into mid-stream.
The best friend of the Baboo cannot acquit him of a tendency to temporise, a hankering after finesse, a too fatal facility to fall under pecuniary temptation.
Larkins did not know; it appears likewise, that there was a Persian moonshee in a secret of which Cantoo Baboo was ignorant; and it appears that Mr. Palmer was in the secret of a transaction not intrusted to any of the rest.
I had often heard it when paddling softly up one of the wild Malayan rivers. It was the death cry of a wah-wah monkey facing the cruel jaws of a crocodile. I plunged my fingers into my ears to smother the sound. I understood it all now. Baboo's pirates, the dreaded Orang Kayah's rebels, were the troop of monkeys we had heard the night before in the tambusa trees. "Baboo," I shouted, "come here!
And when they had likewise inscribed the day of his birth, and the name of his natal star, the proud and happy Baboo cried, with a loud voice, three times, "Chinna Tumbe," and all the Brahmins stretched forth their hands and pronounced Asowadam, benediction.
Hunters will go miles to avoid one of them, and a herd of elephants will go trumpeting away in fear at their approach. Kuching run away. Baboo catch tail, run too. Kuching go long ways. Baboo 'fraid Aboo Din whip and tell kuching must go back. Kuching pick Baboo up in mouth when Baboo let go. "Kuching hurt Baboo. Baboo stick fingers in kuching's eye. Kuching no more hurt Baboo.
But some have so managed the affair, that, when you inquire who the farmer is, Was such a one farmer? No. Cantoo Baboo? No. Another? No, at last you find three deep of fictitious farmers, and you find the European gentlemen, high in place and authority, the real farmers of the settlement.
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