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Mat, the man who had upset the torch and plunged the house in darkness, alone failed to add his voice to the miserable cheer raised by his fellows. Wild with fear of the beast without, he crept, unobserved by the others, up into the pâra, or shelf-like upper apartment, on which Mînah had been wont to sit, when strangers were about, during the short days of her virginity.
'Fear nothing, Mînah, Che’ Sĕman whispered, in a hoarse, strange voice, to his little daughter, who nestled miserably against his breast, 'in a space He will be gone. Even He of the Hairy Face will do us no harm while we sit within the house. Che’ Sĕman spoke from the experience of many generations of Malays, but he knew not the nature of the strange beast with whom he had to deal.
Every magpie, minah, and wattle-bird within a mile joins in the clamour. They dart at the hawk as he flies from tree to tree. When he alights on a limb they give him no peace; they flap their wings in his face, and call him the worst of names.
He had a fashion of pushing rather heedlessly straight to his purpose which now was to speak to her, to meet her face to face, to touch her hand and to offer his aid. Naturally he sought the father's acquaintance first. This was not difficult, for the waiters in the dining-room had been pointing him out to the guests as "Mr. Clement, the meyonaire minah."
Yet is it given to me, by God's grace, to convey to you an understanding of a tiny bit of eternity. "The grains of sand on the beach of Waikiki are as many as the stars, and more. No man may count them. Did he have a million lives in which to count them, he would have to ask for more time. Now let us consider a little, dinky, old minah bird with one broken wing that cannot fly.
At last he reached Che’ Sĕman, and Mînah, seeing him approach, made a feeble effort to evade him. Then began a fearful scene, the tiger playing with, and torturing the girl, just as we all have seen a cat do with a maimed mouse. Again and again Mînah crawled feebly away from her tormentor, only to be drawn back again just when escape seemed possible.
Minah," Jim Caope suggested. "Mrs. Minah!" Mrs. Caope exclaimed. "Talk about riveh ladies theh's one. She owns Mozart Bend. Seventeen mile of Mississippi River's her'n, an' nobody but knows hit, if not to start with, then by the end. She stands theh, at the breech of her rifle, and, ho law, cayn't she shoot! She's real respectable, too, cyarful an' 'cordin' to law.
For instance, beneath the eaves hung a couple of cages, neatly made of bamboo, in one of which was a pair of the little lovebird paroquets side by side upon a perch; and in the other a minah, a starling-like bird, that kept leaping from perch to perch, and repeating with a very clear enunciation several Malay words.
At Waikiki the minah bird that cannot fly takes one grain of sand in its beak and hops, hops, all day lone and for many days, all the day to Pearl Harbour and drops that one grain of sand into the harbour. Then it hops, hops, all day and for many days, all the way back to Waikiki for another grain of sand. And again it hops, hops all the way back to Pearl Harbour.
In the direction of the capital the land slopes to a level two miles from the sea and then spreads flatly to the shore. The hillsides are not, as a rule, in a state of cultivation, although the soil is fertile. The land is now cumbered with wild guava, which bears fruit as big as the lemon, and with the lantana, the seeds of which are scattered broadcast by an imported bird called the minah.
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