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Updated: June 10, 2025
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.
He was simplicity itself then; all in white; muffled about his head; for arms only a kriss with a plain buffalo-horn handle, which he would politely conceal within a fold of his sarong before stepping over the threshold.
Then Jackson, with glittering drops of water on his hair and beard, came back looking angry, and Hollis, who, being the youngest of us, assumed an indolent superiority, said without stirring, "Give him a dry sarong give him mine; it's hanging up in the bathroom." Karain laid the kriss on the table, hilt inwards, and murmured a few words in a strangled voice.
Hard is the lot of childhood that knows nothing of the visits of Kriss Kringle, or the stockings hung by the chimney at night; and cheerless is any age that is not brightened by some Christmas gift, however humble. What a mystery of preparation there is in the preceding days, what planning and plottings of surprises!
Omar had crept close, and now, kneeling above him, held the kriss in one hand while the other skimmed over his jacket up towards his breast in gentle touches; but the blind face, still turned to the heat of the fire, was set and immovable in its aspect of stony indifference to things it could not hope to see.
And now this became an anxious function, for night had fallen and it would soon be necessary to light the candles on the tree, and Cherokee was apt to make an irruption at any time in his Kriss Kringle garb. At length the wagon of the child "rustlers" rattled down the street to the door. The ladies, with little screams of excitement, flew to the lighting of the candles.
To prove their absurdity, a friend of mine climbed up a upas-tree, and passed two hours in its branches, where he took his lunch and smoked a cigar. The tree, however, does contain poison, and the natives extract the sap, with which they rub their spear and kriss blades: wounds inflicted with blades thus anointed, are mortal.
One it is said even jumped down to the ground fifteen feet, I should judge and broke his leg. The royal governor of Patusan had bizarre mannerisms, and one of them was to introduce boastful rhapsodies into every arduous discussion, when, getting gradually excited, he would end by flying off his perch with a kriss in his hand.
The minister wore a silk handkerchief wound round his head, the end sticking out at the top, a silk vest, a richly embroidered coat, broad trousers with a deep fringe, and a handsome shawl round his waist, into which was stuck his sword and kriss, the end of which made his coat stick out very much behind. Such, indeed is the general dress of the Malays in those regions.
Karain covered the handle of his kriss in sign of respect, and stared at the crowned head. "The Invincible, the Pious," he muttered. "She is more powerful than Suleiman the Wise, who commanded the genii, as you know," said Hollis, gravely. "I shall give this to you." He held the sixpence in the palm of his hand, and looking at it thoughtfully, spoke to us in English.
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