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Now I shall save yours." "Save mine?" said the doctor. "Well, I hope we shall have no more tigers to face." "No," said the man, "not from tigers, but from men. You did not eat blachang to-night?" "No," said the doctor. "Why?" "Sultan Hamet had toobah put in it to-night: same as to make fish sleep." "What? I don't understand you!" cried the doctor excitedly.
You see," he said, taking his seat cross-legged, like the Malays, in front of a dish of blachang, and its neighbour a delicious chicken curry, "you will to-day be exposed a good deal to the heat of the sun; you will exert yourselves, no doubt; and therefore it is advisable that you should be very moderate in what you eat and drink.
Blachang, a preservation, if it may be so termed, of an opposite kind, is esteemed a great delicacy among the Malays, and is by them exported to the west of India. The country Sumatrans seldom procure it. It is a species of caviar, and is extremely offensive and disgusting to persons who are not accustomed to it, particularly the black kind, which is the most common.
There were tea and coffee, potted meats and sardines, and side by side with them, delicious Malay curries, made with fresh cocoa-nut, sambals of the most piquant nature, and fresh fish and blachang that favourite preparation of putrid shrimps.
The best sort, or the red blachang, is made of the spawn of shrimps, or of the shrimps themselves, which they take about the mouths of rivers. They are, after boiling, exposed to the sun to dry, then pounded in a mortar with salt, moistened with a little water and formed into cakes, which is all the process.
They were all full of frolic and mischief. Then we had a slim repast of soda water and bananas, the Hadji worshiped with his face toward Mecca, and the boatmen prepared an elaborate curry for themselves, with salt fish for its basis, and for its tastiest condiment blachang a Malay preparation much relished by European lovers of durion and decomposed cheese.
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