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Updated: May 13, 2025
Around this thronelike couch were grouped her slaves and attendants, all armed with barongs and krises stuck into their wide sash belts, and attired in many-coloured garments that gave one the impression, both from fit and odour, of being on terms of long and close acquaintance with their wearers.
Yet there rose from the midst of it a long, rumbling, intermittent murmur, and here and there marched columns of men in good order, while again disorderly bands ran hither and hither with krises waving in the sun, and the red turban of war wound round their heads.
They shook hands in return, rather awkwardly, but answered smile with smile, talking excitedly in their native tongue, and seeming surprised that I could speak only a word or two of Malay, without doubt a more agreeable language than that harsh and unintelligible one in which the white officers were bargaining for barongs and krises.
"Well, you don't catch me taking ladies out on a dark night, unless it's in a big dragon-boat with plenty of men on board; and then I should like to have a gun." "They are horrible beasts," said Archie, "and I wonder that the Malay fellows don't try to exterminate them." "Ah! Go in pluckily and make a decent use of those crooked krises of theirs.
There was something fascinating to Smith in the spectacle: the almost naked Malays, armed with their terrible krises, swarming on every part of the vessel; the Chinamen with pikes, muskets, and stink-balls fighting with the courage of despair to keep the boarders at bay.
And has he helped to make them happy? did they always sit singing there before he or others came, or did they have to watch with Krises ready, for fear of stealthy foes foes who crept to stab beneath the raised bamboo floors. Perhaps he, too, has aided with his mite perhaps who knows? And as this thought occurs, the discontent will fade, while content alone remains.
The open places left by the crossing of the bamboo slats were a great convenience to the punghulo's wives, as they could sweep all the refuse of the house through them; they might also be a great accommodation to the punghulo's enemies, if he had any, for they could easily ascertain the exact mat on which he slept, and stab him with their keen krises from beneath.
If we could only get another, and a couple of them krises, we should be regular set up if it come to a scrimmage, as it shall, as sure as my name's Peter. We are going to escape somehow; and if anybody stops us it's a fight. We sha'n't be able to throw the spears like these Malay beggars do, but me and Mister Archie can do bay'net practice with them in a way that will open some of their eyes.
"I suppose it's cowardly; but who can help it, hearing them ugly, slimy things chopping the water and gnashing their teeth at you? I want to know what such things as them was made for. Talk about Malays and pisoned krises! Why, I would rather meet hundreds of them.
These pirates are supposed to possess in the whole about two hundred prahus, which usually are manned with from forty to fifty pirates; the number therefore engaged in this business, may be estimated at ten thousand. They are armed with muskets, blunderbusses, krises, hatchets, and spears, and at times the vessels have one or two large guns mounted.
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