battah

Updated: June 20, 2025

They deafened me with their yells.... I did not lose my head, but pretending to feel perfectly assured, I seated myself on a stone close at hand.... The gestures of the savages left no doubt of their intentions; with their knives they simulated the action of cutting my throat, with their teeth they seemed to rend my arms, and they moved up and down their jawbones as if my flesh were already in their mouths.... Rising, I went straight to the nearest man, and striking him familiarly on the shoulder, I said, with a smile, half in Malay and half in Battah, 'Come, come, you will never have the heart to kill and eat a woman, and an old woman like me, whose skin is harder than leather!" A roar of laughter greeted this courageous speech, and the speaker was immediately received into the friendship of her savage auditors, who overwhelmed her with marks of goodwill and admiration.

W. H. Davenport Adams - Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century